Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A dra­mat­ic res­cue un­fold­ed along the North Coast Road in Mara­cas on Wednes­day af­ter­noon af­ter a tree col­lapsed on­to a mov­ing maxi taxi, push­ing it over an em­bank­ment.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice said it re­ceived a call at 12:58 p.m. from a mo­torist re­port­ing a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent be­tween the Mara­cas Look­out and the Spring Bridge, a stretch known for tight cor­ners and heavy for­est cov­er.

Fire of­fi­cials con­firmed that a sin­gle ve­hi­cle, a maxi taxi, was in­volved. The falling tree re­port­ed­ly struck the mov­ing maxi, send­ing it veer­ing off the road­way and over a small em­bank­ment. Two peo­ple were on­board. One pas­sen­ger suf­fered lac­er­a­tions, while the oth­er be­came trapped in­side the wreck­age, though re­spon­ders said the in­di­vid­ual re­mained con­scious and re­spon­sive.

A mul­ti-unit re­sponse was ac­ti­vat­ed, with Light Search and Res­cue crews from the San­ta Cruz and Mor­vant Fire Sta­tions dis­patched. The first unit ar­rived at 1:41 p.m., se­cured the area, and be­gan ex­tri­ca­tion ef­forts.

LSAR per­son­nel used cut­ting and pry­ing tools to peel back crushed sec­tions of the ve­hi­cle, while GM­RTT am­bu­lance staff at­tend­ed to the in­jured pas­sen­ger. An ad­di­tion­al am­bu­lance was re­quest­ed due to the sever­i­ty of the crash.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency were no­ti­fied and are be­ing kept up­dat­ed as ef­forts con­tin­ue to re­move the maxi taxi from the cliff.