500-Pound Man Rescued After 12 Hours In River

[Midnight Mike]

Grantsburg, Wis. Crews rescued a Pine City, Minn. man from the St. Croix River at Fox Landing, near Grantsburg, Wis. after he spent 12 hours stuck in the water. Authorities said the man's weight was a mitigating factor in his delayed rescue.

At about 8:15 p.m. Monday, authorities received a call of someone with a medical condition needing assistance.

According to the Pine County Sheriff's Office, a group had gone tubing on the river when Martin Rike's tube went flat about two miles south of Fox Landing.

After attempting to get out of the water and walk back, Rike, 39, began having chest pains. He had also slipped on irregular rocks, injuring an ankle and a knee.

When crews attempted to rescue Rike by boat, they found the water was too shallow, causing the boat to get caught on the rocks.

Dispatch said Rike weighed about 500 pounds and said his weight was a factor in how long it took crews to rescue him.

At 5 a.m. Tuesday, a hovercraft was dispatched to try to retrieve Rike, who authorities said remained alert and conscious throughout his ordeal. Soon after, authorities reported the hovercraft effort had failed.

"Every resource we had simply did not work until got down to physical manpower," said Chief Deputy Steve Ovick, with the Pine County Sheriff's Department. "The aircraft that found him said they could not lift that amount of weight."

Burnett County authorities said they were trying to recruit a helicopter from Traverse City, Mich., the closest location with a hoist.

Eventually authorities managed to load Rike into a raft made of wood and three canoes.

"There wasn't enough water for it to float, so they physically used that as a stretcher," Ovick said.

Some 40 to 50 rescuers took turns hoisting the boat, carrying it two feet at a time until they found a spot in the river deep enough for the boat to float down to a waiting ambulance.

Rike was pulled from the river around 8 a.m., nearly 12 hours after rescue attempts began.

"It was very taxing. It was probably 70 degrees and the humidity was very high last night," Ovick said. "Lifting him, moving two feet at a time, you get tired real quick with 600 pounds of cargo."

Rike was taken to Burnett Medical Center in Granstburg, where he was reported to be in stable condition.

[hiss srq]

WOW! This should be a wakeup call for that gentlemen. Time to get healty and learn better life habits. His weight and inability to control his habits etc... nearly cost him his life.

[PhilDernerJr]

Wow. How big was that ****in tube?

[Midnight Mike]

WOW! This should be a wakeup call for that gentlemen. Time to get healty and learn better life habits. His weight and inability to control his habits etc... nearly cost him his life.

Who are you telling!

39 years old
500 pounds
chest pains

I'll take somebody that is going to die in 5 years for a $100 Alex....

[cancidas]

"The aircraft that found him said they could not lift that amount of weight."

that's probably the funniest sentance in the whole story. seriously though, how could you let yourself get to that weight? to have chest pains from just walking in water is friggin sad... i know i'm big but i'm not THAT big.


reminds me of a run sheet i got my hands on a few years ago. nycmedic might have heard about this one. some guy's mom called 911 after he started screaming he was having heart pains. they lived on the second floor of a 2-floor house in queens. the guy weighed close to 700 pounds and FDNY needed to gut a hole in the side of the building, load the guy onto a wooden pallet, load him into a truck borrowed from the special ops folks and use that to get him to a hospital. if you go here: http://www.fdnytrucks.com/files/html...lunits/soc.htm
and go to the bottom of the page you'll see a picture of the truck they needed to use to get this guy to an ER.