Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A tense, 48-hour res­cue op­er­a­tion in the deep for­est off Lala­ja, along the Ari­ma–Blan­chisseuse Road, con­clud­ed suc­cess­ful­ly yes­ter­day as na­tion­al emer­gency teams ex­tract­ed the in­jured hik­er, 40-year-old Fayyad Ho­sein of Rio Claro, who suf­fered a frac­tured left fe­mur dur­ing a re­mote hike.

As­sis­tant Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer for the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Cleave Cum­mings, praised the co­or­di­nat­ed ef­forts of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), and civil­ian guides, de­scrib­ing the mis­sion as one of the most de­mand­ing yet re­ward­ing his di­vi­sion has ex­e­cut­ed.

“This is not the first res­cue of this du­ra­tion, but this one car­ries a spe­cial mean­ing,” Cum­mings said. “We brought the ca­su­al­ty out alive. To­day we cel­e­brate the tenac­i­ty, de­ter­mi­na­tion, and team­work of every res­cuer.”

Ho­sein spent near­ly 48 hours in the for­est, much of it im­mo­bile. Res­cue units, led by Land Search and Res­cue teams, TTDF per­son­nel un­der Lance Cor­po­ral Dot­tin, and civil­ian guide Tian Wat­son, pushed through harsh ter­rain and in­ter­mit­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ures to reach and sta­bilise him.

While be­ing lift­ed out, Ho­sein was grate­ful and thanked the of­fi­cers.

He said he was fear­ful that things would have gone dif­fer­ent­ly, but the of­fi­cers gave him hope.

Tian Wat­son, of Cool Blue Evo­lu­tion, who led the canyon­ing-style tour, de­scribed the in­tense dif­fi­cul­ty of the ter­rain and the mo­ment the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

“This par­tic­u­lar route is our hard­est of­fer­ing—a grade 5-plus,” Wat­son ex­plained.

“On this trip, we had 19 par­tic­i­pants, and around the mid­point, one of them im­pact­ed his up­per thigh on the rocks and be­came im­mo­bile. That’s when the ex­trac­tion process had to be­gin.”

Wat­son said he had al­ready been guid­ing from 4 am Sat­ur­day, and af­ter the in­jury at 3.30 pm, he first had to es­cort two oth­er par­tic­i­pants to safe­ty be­fore re-en­ter­ing the for­est to sup­port the main evac­u­a­tion.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing like this,” he said.

“But the Fire Ser­vice and the De­fence Force—amaz­ing. The lev­el of com­mit­ment, car­ing, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, the tech­niques they used, the sys­tems, the co­or­di­na­tion—it was noth­ing short of in­cred­i­ble. I was right there with them and saw it my­self.”

He added that amid na­tion­al neg­a­tiv­i­ty, the pub­lic should recog­nise what these re­spon­ders ac­com­plished.

“They’re top of the game. Big thanks and big ap­pre­ci­a­tion to them.”

At the res­cue site, Ho­sein’s fa­ther, Ha­roon Ho­sein, de­scribed the emo­tion­al toll.

“My son left for a hike on Fri­day af­ter­noon… We didn’t hear from him Sat­ur­day evening. By Sun­day morn­ing, I got a mes­sage say­ing they were look­ing for Fayyad’s par­ents. That’s when we re­alised some­thing was wrong.”

He said the fam­i­ly had en­dured hours with­out in­for­ma­tion.

“It’s been very dif­fi­cult—for his moth­er, his sis­ters, every­one.”

He called his son an avid out­doors­man who hiked reg­u­lar­ly.

“This is the first time some­thing like this ever hap­pened,” he said.

Cum­mings praised Wat­son, who trekked near­ly 11 hours to alert au­thor­i­ties be­fore re­turn­ing to guide res­cuers back to the ca­su­al­ty.

“Your ef­fort en­sured our teams were fo­cused and pro­duc­tive. Job well done.”

Fel­low hik­er Visham Ram­danie stayed with Ho­sein through­out his or­deal un­til he was safe­ly trans­ferred to med­ical care.

Au­thor­i­ties urged hik­ers to ob­serve safe­ty pro­to­cols, car­ry prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices, and use ex­pe­ri­enced guides when ven­tur­ing in­to re­mote ter­rain.