Montoursville High School student gravely injured at Jacoby Falls in Gamble Township
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A 17-year-old Montoursville Area School District student was flown to Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, with critical injuries he suffered Wednesday morning when he fell at Jacoby Falls along a trail in Gamble Township, according to emergency personnel at the scene.
The teen was with other students on a field trip when he fell about 30 feet from a ledge or cliff along the Jacoby Falls Trail about 10:45 a m, officials said.
The only way firefighters and paramedics could reach the student was to travel about two miles up the trail in all-terrain and utility-terrain vehicles.
From there, in order to reach him, special rope-rigging gear was needed to lower most of the rescuers and their equipment. The student was then loaded into a Stokes basket and lifted up to a ledge where firefighters put him in the back of a UTV that brought him to the base of the trail, just off of Wallis Run Road.
The student, whose name was not released, was then carried to Geisinger’s medical helicopter, which had landed in a nearby scene.
It was a very traumatic ordeal not only for the other students, some of whom may have seen him fall, but also for the students’ parents who had arrived during the rescue effort and stayed close to a command post that was set up at the foot of the trail.
Volunteer firefighters from Montoursville, Eldred Township and Plunketts Creek Township all responded as did Task Force 80 (Pennsylvania Urban Search and Rescue), a group of specially-trained firemen who handle delicate rescues such as these. UPMC paramedics were there as was the state Game Commission since the trail is on their property.