A SERIOUSLY ill walker was picked up in the Highlands after triggering a rescue operation by sending a distress message 4,000 miles to the United States.
Niels Vinter, 60, was walking coast to coast across Scotland when he became ill with severe abdominal pains while in Glen Etive, 15 miles from Fort William.
Unable to get a signal on his mobile phone, he was saved by using a new form of hand-held
emergency beacon, the size of a TV remote control, which sent a global positioning satellite (GPS) message to a control centre in Houston, with digital co-ordinates that pinpointed his exact location.
In what is thought to be the first rescue of its type in the UK using the satellite beacon technology, it only took about three and a half hours from the time Mr Vinter raised the alarm to him being taken to hospital.
Mr Vinter, a Dane who lives in Sunderland, pressed a panic button on the satellite personal tracker (Spot) at 2:24am yesterday. The message was sent to the Geos Emergency Response Centre in Texas which alerted Northern Constabulary in Fort William. They in turn relayed the message at 3am to the RAF Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Kinloss which coordinates the UK's search and rescue helicopters.
After verifying the information with the American centre, the Moray base scrambled a Royal Navy Sea King from Prestwick, which was on standby.
The helicopter took off at 4:37am and arrived at the scene at 5:10. The walker was given treatment on the spot before being taken on the eight-minute flight to Belford Hospital in Fort William, touching down at 5:45am.
Mr Vinter is said to be recovering, but was unable to give interviews yesterday.
Flight Sergeant Tim Dickinson, a rescue co-ordinator at RAF Kinloss, said: "This was a very unusual set of circumstances but it was a perfect example of excellent cooperation between the police at Fort William and the military search and rescue services. This is the first rescue of this type using this technology to take place in the UK.
"It is great it ran so smoothly.
"The air crew went direct to the position given and it was perfect. They flew literally on top of this man's tent."
Flt Sgt Dickinson added: "The beacon fits in the palm of your hand and gives out a digital GPS position, with latitude and longitude.
"The button has to be pressed down for two seconds to activate a distress message, to prevent accidental activation.
"The signal is transmitted 4,000 miles on to the computer screens at the emergency response centre in Houston. They used Google maps to find his location.
"The staff there got in touch with his next of kin, who confirmed he was doing a coast-to-coast trek of Scotland, starting at Glencoe on Friday."
The full article contains 493 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
