Providing adequate and effective rescue to people in distress can often be a challenge. But the challenge becomes truly demanding when rescue must be carried out in a hostile environment: high altitudes, rock walls, isolated mountain trails and huts, inaccessible places out of reach for traditional emergency vehicles. I have documented from the inside some moments of these special operations carried out by the rescue helicopter operating in the Dolomites (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the most fascinating area of the Italian Alps.
Image1: Rescue intervention for injured climbers: a mountain rescue technician, while waiting for the helicopter to land, carefully observes his colleagues already at work on the rock wall.
Image2: A mountain rescue technician is winched down to a rock wall, to retrieve an injured hiker.
Image3: Retrieval completed: a woman with a broken arm is winch to safety aboard the helicopter.
Image4: Mountain rescue technician, while securing a group of mountaineers in distress so that the doctor can have access to them and begin initial treatment, observes the helicopter evacuating the first of them.
Image5: Rescue mission has been completed: a mountain rescue technician pauses to contemplate "his" mountains, a hostile but unique place in the world.
