NEWRY – Ambulance services from Mexico and Norway, and a medical helicopter, were kept busy Saturday responding to several skiing accidents at Sunday River Ski Resort.
Regarding the more serious traumas, LifeFlight flew a 19-year-old woman with a back injury to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston at about 4:30 p.m., and a 21-year-old man to the same hospital sometime after 2 p.m., resort spokesman Alex Kaufman said Saturday afternoon.
Kaufman, who declined to provide names or towns of the injured, said the woman fell while skiing on White Heat, an expert-rated trail on White Cap Mountain.
“She didn’t hit anything, she was in the middle of the trail,” he said of the 3:43 p.m. accident.
The man fell at about 2 p.m. while skiing in the Rocking Chair terrain park on Barker Mountain.
“He hit a jump and landed improperly,” Kaufman said, declining to identify the man’s injuries.
The medical helicopter also was requested at about 11:30 a.m. when more than one skier was injured in tumbles. Medics on site, however, called off the flight, he added.
Among the injured was a 14-year-old girl, who reportedly skied into a tree and suffered a head injury, but Kaufman would neither confirm nor deny this. He said Med-Care Ambulance of Mexico took the teenager to Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway.
Kaufman said he didn’t know on which trail the teen fell, because she went to a ski patrol official seeking help.
Med-Care also was called to the resort 30 minutes before closing for a 43-year-old man with a reported head injury that didn’t require LifeFlight, and, at 3:43 p.m. for a 17-year-old skier with a broken nose.
Kaufman said it is routine to summon LifeFlight when multiple accidents happen simultaneously.
“There’s a low threshold for transport by LifeFlight,” he said, without identifying parameters.
Should the injured require air transport, ambulances take the patients to Bethel Regional Airport to meet the helicopter.
Kaufman said he wasn’t sure if Saturday’s rash of accidents was abnormal for the resort, but did say that skiers and snowboarders enjoyed springlike skiing and riding in unseasonal warm temperatures .
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