Indiana man falls 70ft into volcano while on honeymoon in the Caribbean, wife pulls him out of crater and saves his life
An Indiana couple was hiking on the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts during their honeymoon when the man fell into a dormant volcano.
However, he miraculously managed to survive the fall and escaped with just a few injuries.
Clay Chastain and his wife, Acaimie, flew to the island for their honeymoon a day after their wedding last month.
Four days after their arrival, on July 18, the couple were hiking up Mount Liamuiga, when the incident took place.
"We had already reached the top and since it was a dormant volcano the crater of it was a lush prarie [sic]. There was a rope trail leading down to it and I trusted the ropes with my weight too much and one of them snapped. Acaimie guessed in total with free fall and tumbling down the hill, which was extremely steep at about 60-70 degrees, I fell for about 50-70 feet," Clay wrote in a Facebook post.
His wife, who had chosen to stay behind because she was afraid of the climb, soon became aware of the fact that her husband was in danger. She immediately made her way down to where Clay had fallen.
"My wife Acaimie is extremely strong and managed to help me back up out of the volcano crater and down the trail up it's side untill [sic] we got signal which was about 2 miles while I was collapsing and vomiting blood the entire way (which apparently was just coming from lacerations in my mouth and nose)" he wrote.
After "freaking out about what I was going to find at the bottom," Acaimie told New York Post in an interview that she kept telling her husband, "We’re going to have to be strong. We’re going to have to climb out of here," in order to keep up his morale during the rescue.
Clay added that it was "a miracle that he was able to support himself for as long as he did with the injuries he had" and that he had enough energy to make it out of the volcano.
Acaimie called 911 after getting cell reception halfway through their descent and paramedics were able to rush Clay to a local hospital.
He was treated for a severe concussion, cracked vertebrae, a skull fracture and loss of hearing in his right ear, which resulted from air getting into his brain tissue.
"I only have a slight fracture in the base of my skull and a severe concussion. I can still move my head around, but the skull fracture caused air to go into my skull which won't allow me to fly commercially and it's making my right ear go deaf because the air is pressured right behind it but it's only temporary they think," according to Clay's Facebook post.
Instead, the pair arranged to take a medical flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Wednesday.