A 78-year-old Norwegian tourist, who had been missing since Sunday, was found by a Guardia Civil patrol in a hard to reach area, thanks to the reflections they say from the mans watch. A helicopter took him to hospital with a serious blow to the head, and severe burns all over his body.

 

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The report was filed by his son at eleven o’clock on Sunday night. The septuagenarian had gone for a walk in the Puerto Rico area and had not returned to his accommodation. A search and rescue operation was deployed, the Guardia Civil were joined this morning by helicopters from the Emergency and Rescue Group (GES), which arrived with Mountain Rescue teams and Intervention Group (Greim) based on Tenerife.

Two agents from the Puerto Rico post found the man in the La Verga ravine around half past eleven this morning. The flash of his watch caught their attention and allowed them to locate him, at the bottom of a steep ravine that made access difficult, and they verified that he was lying down, semi-conscious with severe sunburn on his body. The first measure was to protect him from the intense sun and give notice to the rest of the search teams that he had been found. The agents having located him was crucial as, according to sources from the teams involved, the man’s condition was serious.

The GES aircraft proceeded to evacuate the man, named William to the Hospital Doctor Negrín, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he was admitted for a serious head injury, according to the 112 Emergency and Safety Coordination Centre (CECOES), as well as serious sun burn.

The Norwegian managed to survive extremely high temperatures in the area, which yesterday had exceeded 30ºC in the shade, and had not dropped below 25ºC during the night he spent in the open.