Heartrending rescue bid after Longonot fall

By kiundu waweru

The men were in a sorry state, soggy, muddy and sweating with exhaustion. But their faces glimmered with the adrenaline rush of achievement.

This is a team of highly trained search and rescue rangers. They had just retrieved a body down a treacherous mountain trail, in pitch darkness, rain pounding and with the threat of wild animals.

They gulped steaming hot tea, but it did not stop the shivering. Words had no meaning. Reverend Geoffrey Gathairu, shaken and emotional, greeted the men with reverence, and then patted their backs.

It had been a long day. Easter Sunday, when Christians were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a family, a village, a church was searching for a loved one who fell down the world famous crater in Mt Longonot.

The crater goes down for more than 200m according to the guides, with the steep slope full of hanging cliffs, and thick underbrush.

This is where two youths from the SGM PCEA Kinoo had fallen. Evanson Kanithi, the Kinoo Ward County Representative was among the 50 Presbyterian Church Men Fellowship group on the excursion. They had arrived at the mountain on Saturday upbeat and excited. At the foot of the mountain, remembers Kanithi, the Parish Minister, Dr Gathairu, asked they be taken through exercise. Isaac Ng’ang’a volunteered.

Ng’ang’a, in a group of eight, had arrived at the peak first. Later, Kanithi arrived, and with his group, started a walk around the rim of the mountain.

“We received a call that some group members had fallen off the crater. Some escaped, but two were not lucky. It was Ng’ang’a, and his cousin Silas Njuguna. Njuguna was retrieved by the Mt Longonot National Park rangers on Saturday, but his cousin had not been found by dusk. A team in a helicopter from Tropic Air joined the search in vain.

Needed help

Naivasha Senior Warden Osman Ibrahim in charge of Mt Longonot and Hell’s Gate called his Mt Kenya counterpart Simon Gitau. Mr Ibrahim has only two trained rangers in search and rescue. He needed help. Early Sunday morning, the Mt Kenya Search and Rescue Unit arrived at the Mt Longonot National Park.

The rescuers, carrying heavy mountaineering equipment, scaled the mountain in record time. In Mt Kenya, they rescue people who have fallen off rocks and cliffs, others affected by mountain sickness and numbed by snow. Longonot did not seem much of a threat.

On this day, by the time the volunteers arrived at the peak, two rescuers had gone down the crater, slithering on ropes. At 12.05pm, ‘Mike two’ from below, says on walkie-talkie they have not found the body yet.

It is decided that two more people join them. Mr Evans Mwiti, immediately puts on a harness around his waist.

Robert Musau, who trained with the Mt Kenya team but was transferred to Hell’s Gate after the tragedy in April last year where seven youths from Dagoretti Mukarara PCEA died in flash floods, also joined the rescue team.

In a coordinated teamwork, they secure ropes on sturdy trees and after Mwiti and Musau start abseiling, the other members belay the rope. It’s a risky affair, though there are people who do it as a sport. For the Mt Kenya team, it is a risk to save lives.

“We don’t do it for the money. This is a calling,” says Gitau, Mt Kenya acting Senior Warden, on the telephone. He headed the unit since it was conceived 12 years ago until June last year.

As Mr Laban Wanjohi belays the rope to Mwiti, he says that to work in the team they must be friends first. “Right now, I am holding Mwiti’s life in my hands. You trust your colleague more than even family.”

Hanging on rope

And after 50 minutes of hanging on the rope, Mwiti spots the body hidden from view by a brush in a cliff. They lower the body for about 50 metres to the floor of the Crater.

Joseph Kirago, the PCEA Kinoo Youth Chairman was in Ng’ang’a’s group when tragedy struck. Today, he is early to help in the search. A makeshift stretcher is ready. The body has to be carried for about two hours to where there is navigable trail.

The trail is up a steep incline about 200m high, through rocks and thick underbrush. The plan is to pull the body from the peak. A lot of people are at hand for this, including former Kinoo Parish minister the Reverend Timothy Njoya. It is getting late and raining heavily. No amount of team pulling the ropes holding the stretcher, harnessed from the peak help, despite the expertise and equipment involved. The terrain is unforgiving.

Finally, at about 6.30pm, the mission is called off for the dangers posed with gathering darkness and the rain. The people leave with a heavy heart.

However, Kirago and two other youths from Kinoo, and three Mt Kenya rescuers down in the crater carry on. Beaten, hungry, wet and cold they pull out the body. Kirago will remember what followed for the rest of his life. “We would pick the stretcher, count to three and heave it to the people in front, up the slippery trail.”

A wrong move and another life would have been lost. Some minutes to 9pm and the body gets to the peak. Then the long journey down the mountain begins. They arrive at the park after 10pm.

The Mt Kenya team is congratulated with measured smiles. To them, recovery is a bitter sweet victory. Their best moment is when they get the victims alive, like Nyanjui or the Romanian tourist who had hang on a cliff for 58 hours with a broken leg.

The team

The team has been involved in memorable tragedies, some which got wide coverage in local and international media. But the faces behind the missions remain anonymous.

In May 2007, Kenya Airways flight 507 crashed at a mangrove swamp shortly after take-off in Douala, Cameroon. The Mt Kenya Search and Rescue unit was deployed to assist in the search and recovery of the 114 people who perished. They scoured the swamp for three weeks.

Later that year in November, KWS pilot Major Solomon Nyanjui crashed in the dense Kiangando Forest, Chuka. He went missing for seven days. The Mt Kenya team was again headlining the search, and it brought into focus Kenya’s lack of capacity and equipment for such tragedies.

The team comprises 12 members and is under KWS. Training and equipment is expensive and owing to the risk of the job, most people who seek to join them fall by the wayside.

Gitau says the best of the team, including Mwiti, have trained in Italy and Austria. The two countries are part of the great mountain range system, Alps, in Europe.

They are also trained on disaster management, wilderness first aid, navigation and orientation. Musau recently returned from Israel for a course in Combat Medical first aid.

With their experience, the group last year trained the Uganda Wildlife Authority mountain rangers. “The Kenya Defence Forces holds us in awe after participating in search and rescue of the Ugandan military choppers that crashed in Mt Kenya last year,” says Gitau.

Ibrahim says one of the lessons learnt with the Hell’s Gate and Longonot tragedies is the need to train more rescue teams. “We have two trained officers. We need more.”

For Gitau, the original team is growing old, and soon they wouldn’t be able to scale rocks as smoothly. They are recruiting.