Woman who fell down mountain saved thanks to app

By Blaise Cloran via SWNS

A hiker has told how his auntie's life was saved because he had the what3words app on his mobile phone.

Ed Farnworth, 31, and his auntie, Sarah Robert, 59, were hiking in Switzerland when Sarah fell 60 feet down a mountain and suffered serious injuries.

Sarah suffered a broken arm, and a gashed forehead and was severely concussed in the fall.

The pair were away from flat ground, in the woods and there were no landmarks for Ed to tell the emergency services where they were.

Luckily, Ed, from Bolton, Lancs, had the what3words app on his phone which provides users with a unique three-word code that reveals their precise location.

After ringing the emergency services, who knew about what3words, the address ///crabmeat.hers.froze showed the services the exact spot where Sarah landed.

Ed said: “For most of my adult life I’ve been drawn to the outdoors, traveling, my big thing is getting out and seeing the world.

“My auntie hikes a lot too, with her friends and work colleagues. It’s not as if we had not done stuff like this before, we were used to different terrain and everything.”

On June 17, 2024, Ed and Sarah set off on what they thought was another memorable hike which they had both researched beforehand.

Ed, the scheduling manager at BP, regularly goes and visits his auntie who is originally from Fleet, Hangs, but is now living in Switzerland.

Ed said: “The weather was great; we’d stopped off for lunch and we were having an amazing day.

“I was leading the way in front of her on our descent down the mountain when I turned around and saw she had started to lose her balance.

“She was very close to the edge and started to fall, she had a backpack on, so her balance was all out of sync.

“She tumbled over the edge and from then on, she didn’t stop tumbling down. She was hysterical, shouting my name and shouting help.

“I’ve never heard her, or anyone sound like that before.”

During Sarah’s fall, she hit rocks and trees and was covered in debris. Ed recalls her hitting her head on a tree extremely hard quite early on.

He said: "It was a dense whack and then she stopped making any noise, she was probably out cold from that point.

“I lost sight of her as I tried to compose myself and make my way down to her, I’d never dealt with anything like this before - I was just trying to mentally prepare for something i wasn’t going to like.

“I found her on her front unconscious, I thought that she was dead at this point.

“She had a huge cut in her forehead, an open wound and her face was purple already.

"Her arm was badly broken, and she was covered in blood.

“She was visibly concussed, she was asking me the same question over and over and she didn’t know who I was to start with.

“She was crying out for her husband and daughter, and she still can’t remember a thing from what happened.”

Ed knew he had to remain calm and call for help but panicked that he had no idea where they were until he remembered the what3words app.

He said: “I had downloaded what3words a few years ago, I remember downloading it because I go on all these hiking trips, I had genuinely forgotten about it.

“Internally I am absolutely bricking it, I don’t know how I am going to tell others, I don’t know if she’s going to make it. I have all these things running through my head.”

Looking back, Ed knew the app saved Sarah’s life.

She was starting to say she was cold and without it, it could have taken hours for them to make the emergency services aware of their location.

Ed said: “I would have had to potentially try and find help or shout for help, which might have made my auntie more distressed.

“It sped the whole process up and stopped any further injuries occurring, I am super super grateful that I had that app.”

It only took 25 minutes for the helicopter to find the pair.

Sarah remained in hospital for over a week, her face was completely misshapen, and she is still in a neck brace.

She also had surgery to put a metal plate in her arm.

Ed said: “We are hopeful that everything is going to be ok, at the minute she is in the neck brace and on bed rest with regular GP visits.

"She had no idea what happened.

“I am the only one who can relive the incident, I feel like there is added pressure to make sure I recount it properly.

“I had to ring her husband, my family, my mum is her sister, and they are super close. They speak every night.

“The thought of going back to work and people asking ‘how was your holiday’- a no go.

“But I want to make people aware of how important having what3words is, people having it is reassuring to me.”

Sarah is aware the app saved her life, and the pair are both still passionate about hiking, with Sarah keen to get back on her feet after her recovery.

Ed said: “I’m taking a group of people from work hiking tomorrow and I’ll make sure they all have what3words.”

Sarah said: "Unfortunately I have no recollection of the accident itself.

''The last thing I remember is being out in the open quite happily, and then coming round in the hospital.

''But, my injuries are proof that it was a significant fall. So whilst I can't comment on the incident itself, I am grateful for help I received from my nephew and the emergency workers who arrived quickly on the scene.

''what3words helped speed up the whole treatment process for which I am extremely grateful. Without it, I don't see how I would have got the help I needed and things may have ended much worse.

''I had never heard of or used the app before my nephew explained it to me, but I'm so thankful he did."

UK emergency services are recommending the free app as 90 percent of Brits enjoy outdoor activities during the summer, and it saves lives when describing locations.

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