Your leg or your life: Inside a perilous 24-hour wild river rescue

RNZ News

2 days ago

By
Monique Ross
and
Robyn Powell
, ABC
Australian Story met Valdas in Lithuania.
Photo:
Supplied / Australian Story / Tom Hancock
Valdas jumps from one boulder to another.
It's a simple rock hop, one he's made hundreds of times in his 50 years of rafting.
But this time, in the remote and rugged Tasmanian wilderness, it goes horribly wrong.
Valdas slips - and falls into the thundering rapids of the Franklin River.
His left leg jams in a narrow gap between two boulders.
"My friends tied ropes around me and tried hauling me out," Valdas tells Australian Story in Lithuania.
"But the leg was so tightly wedged that their efforts were fruitless."
Around 13 tonnes of water per second are flowing down the river, pouring onto him.
It is the beginning of a harrowing 24-hour ordeal, and one of the most complex rescue operations in the state's history.
For the first time, Australian Story can reveal the extraordinary setbacks rescuers had to overcome during the precarious mission, including serious injury and unexpected equipment failure.
Crews have also spoken in detail about how they confronted the option of last resort - a high-risk underwater amputation.
"I felt so conflicted. If this goes ahead, you might kill him," Intensive Care flight paramedic Rohan Kilham says.
"But even if it all goes perfectly, he'll never be the same again."
Valdas is an experienced adventurer, drawn to the freedom of wild places and the adrenaline rush of a challenging river run.
The 66-year-old Lithuanian has travelled the world with a group of paddling mates, trying to tick off a river on five continents.
The last stop on their mission was Australia, and an epic multi-day pack-rafting journey along the Franklin River.
On 22 November 2024, the group of 11 is five days in.
They're in the Great Ravine, a spectacular and formidable gorge.
They decide the conditions aren't right to run the rapid ahead; instead they will portage their catarafts down this stretch of the river.
Valdas scouts the route ahead on foot.
It's after midday when he loses his footing.
"I think it was my hydro-boot with its hard sole that made it slippery on rock," says Valdas, speaking to Australian media for the first time.
In a split second, he is trapped at Coruscades rapid; submerged up to his chest in cold water, about 10 degrees Celsius.
For 40 minutes, the rafters try to free their friend.
When all their efforts fail, they send an SOS message via satellite phone.
"All of us were lost. We felt uncertainty and we didn't know how everything will finish," Lithuanian rafter Arvydas Rudokas says.
Over the next five hours, police, paramedics, doctors and swift water rescuers are winched into the remote scene.
They use spreaders, hydraulics and airbags in a bid to create space between the boulders trapping Valdas's leg.
They drill a tripod into the rocks to create a pulley system and shift his body in various directions to try to extricate him.
"The rescuer even grabbed me by the waist to haul me up, but my leg wouldn't budge," Valdas recalls.
"I think, if he'd been stronger, like Schwarzenegger, he might have managed to uproot me, leaving the leg behind."
The rescuers consider every idea, no matter how outlandish it seems.
Every attempt fails.
"How does someone's leg go into a crack and not come out?" paramedic Rohan says.
"Surely there's a way - there's always a way.
"And there wasn't."
As the hours pass, the rescuers are repeatedly struck by how calm Valdas appears.
His wetsuit is helping him stay warm, and friends bring him hot food and drinks every 30 minutes to keep his body temperature up.
"You could see the determination in Valdas's eyes," swift water rescuer Adrian 'Ace' Petrie says.
"Even though his body was deteriorating, in his mind he was not giving up."
But despite his stoicism, there is growing fear that Valdas will not survive.
"I began to think, maybe I'm destined to stay here, stuck, forever," Valdas says.
The crews stay with Valdas through the long, dark hours of the night. His friends keep the hot drinks coming.
But the elements are taking their toll, and hypothermia starts to set in.
Valdas receives pain medication as the hours pass.
"He was getting colder. He'd lost a fair bit of conversation. His demeanour had totally changed," Ace says.
By the early hours of the morning, it is clear only one option remains - and it's the option nobody wants.
"It was a big mental hurdle, realising that we were going to cut his leg off," Rohan says.
"I'd never had to hurt someone to save their life."
Valdas doesn't speak much English, so rescuers call on Arvydas, who is a medical doctor, to deliver the grim news.
"Valdas asked, 'So I will become handicapped?' Maybe, Valdas. But if not, you will die here in this hole," Arvydas says.
Valdas nods his head, meaning, "Alright, do what you need to do".
The amputation will take place at first light.
"I prayed to God, that's all I could do. Even as a medical person, I couldn't help," Arvydas says.
The only doctor among the rescue crew, Nick Scott, is tasked with amputating Valdas's leg above the knee.
No amount of experience could have prepared him for surgery underwater, in the wilderness, with very few resources, on belay.
The doctor longs for the support of a colleague, but the towering cliffs of the ravine make communication almost impossible.
"I felt isolated," he says.
As he makes his way down the wet rocks towards the water's edge, the unthinkable happens.
He slips and falls.
"I put my hand back and all my weight went through my hand," Nick says.
"I immediately knew that I'd broken something."
It's his wrist.
He lets out "a few expletives", realising the amputation can't go ahead as planned.
"Nick was pretty shattered," swift water rescuer Ace says.
"When you're in those scenarios, you like to see them through."
The ground crews get a message out: another doctor needs to be flown in. The big question is whether Valdas will survive another few hours.
"His power and strength were dramatically decreasing," Arvydas says.
It's mid-morning when the new doctor, Jorian 'Jo' Kippax, himself an experienced white-water kayaker, is winched into the scene.
He feels overwhelmed as he hears the loud roar of the river, and takes in the faces of the people who have worked all night on a precarious rock platform.
The doctor also agonises over the decision to amputate, but everyone agrees Valdas is running out of time.
"The inevitable consequence of him staying there was death, and that was going to be quite soon," he says.
The doctor lowers himself down beside Valdas.
Immediately he feels the pull of the water, wanting to suck him under.
He wedges himself in an awkward spread-eagled position, and takes a breath.
"There was a moment, a real sense of, I really, really don't want to do this."
Once he starts, there is no going back.
"It was like stepping off a cliff. All of a sudden from that point, you were in freefall and the only endpoint is an amputated leg," paramedic Rohan says.
With general anaesthesia not being possible, Valdas is knocked out with ketamine.
Jo can't see the leg, so he opts to do the surgery with bare hands, so he can feel what he's doing.
The velcro tourniquets don't work under water, but he improvises using ratchet straps.
Then he starts the procedure.
He cuts away the muscles of the thigh, "leaving the tremendously strong femur".
"We are trained to saw through this using a Gigli saw - a fine wire which has got sharp serrations on it," he says.
"It's very light, which is why we favour it. But it's also pretty delicate.
"And in this case, it broke."
Jo's heart drops.
Fortunately he manages to break through the rest of the femur.
Within seconds Valdas is free.
"Suddenly, he came backwards into my arms. I was waiting for a gush of blood, but there wasn't," he says.
"The entire procedure, although it felt a long time to me, only took about two minutes."
Crews haul Valdas out of the water and up a rock face.
As Arvydas watches, he is devastated.
"The colour of his skin, and the body ... my diagnosis was Valdas is dead," he says.
He returns to his camp and is silent for several minutes.
He only tells his friends to pray for Valdas.
Everyone is aware that the amputation doesn't guarantee Valdas's survival.
After 24 hours in the water, there is an "extremely high chance" of hypothermic cardiac arrest.
Initially Valdas responds well, but then he starts to crash.
He stops breathing, so the paramedics put him on a ventilator.
Then his heart stops beating.
"There's a little part of you that thinks that we killed him as his rescuers," Rohan says.
Arvydas notices that no one makes eye contact with him.
He asks the rescue crew if Valdas is dead.
"I couldn't say yes, but I definitely couldn't say no," Rohan says.
Valdas is hooked up to a mechanical CPR machine before he is winched up to the chopper.
By the time he arrives at hospital in Hobart, the machine has been keeping his heart beating for 90 minutes.
"If your heart stops beating on the side of the Franklin River," Rohan says,
"Except that Valdas died of a hypothermic cardiac arrest, and it's one of the really unique ways where you actually have a chance."
Because hypothermia slows the body's systems down so much, Jo says, humans can survive "quite long periods of not breathing or very little heart activity".
A paramedic has called ahead to alert the hospital that Valdas urgently needs to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, called ECMO, if he is to survive.
The ECMO machine warms and oxygenates his blood outside his body and then pumps it back in, until they can restart his heart.
Valdas stays on the machine in a coma for four days.
As he wakes, he hears a hymn playing over and over in his head.
"The last hymn you hear before ending up in heaven, or in hell," he says.
"After the hymn I open my eyes and see white - a white ceiling above. I was waking up in the ICU ward."
While doctors, nurses and paramedics are overjoyed, there is concern he has suffered brain damage from the accident.
Jurgita Rakauskaite-Stanwix, a member of the Hobart Lithuanian community, comes in to help with translation.
She holds his hand and translates for doctors as they undertake tests to assess his neurological state.
On the second day, Valdas surprises everyone when he speaks in English.
"He said, 'I'm survivor!'" Jurgita says.
"I was in tears. Nurses were in tears. It's just such a beautiful moment. And he is. He is a survivor."
Before long, Valdas meets the man who amputated his leg in the wilderness.
Jo also works as a trauma specialist, and becomes Valdas's treating doctor.
"I felt like I had to apologise. And he too was quite emotional," the doctor says.
"We both looked at his leg, and looked at each other, and said, 'I'm sorry, this is the way it is.'"
Valdas knows the amputation was the right call.
"Otherwise I would still be stuck there to this day. I would have two legs, but I would still be over there," he says.
In late January, Valdas returned home to Lithuania's capital Vilnius.
His sister Rasa is helping in his recovery.
"This accident has given me the understanding that in life, everything is possible. Every challenge can be overcome," she says.
When Australian Story visited Valdas in May, he was walking on crutches.
Now, he's learning to walk again with a prosthesis.
"I survived. I endured. That's the greatest joy," he says.
"As for the leg, that's not a problem.
"The main thing is being alive and life is a beautiful thing."
Arvydas says his friend was a legend with two legs, and is now a "double legend".
"It doesn't matter. Broken leg. Cut leg. But alive," he says.
A lot went wrong for Valdas, but a lot went his way, too.
His thick wetsuit kept him warm.
He was wearing a life jacket - without it, Ace believes he "probably would have got sucked under the rock".
If it had rained even a few millimetres, the river could have risen and drowned him.
The marathon rescue involved two helicopters, 500 kilograms of gear and a record-breaking 57 winches.
And communication problems that dogged the rescuers were eased when an AMSA jet was flown overhead later in the rescue to provide critical radio communications.
Valdas is grateful for those who saved his life.
"The Australian people were fantastic. It brings tears to my eyes when I remember their care," he says.
"If it had happened in a place other than Australia, heaven knows what would have happened to me."
Valdas now has the "crazy idea" to return to the Franklin River in 2026 and finish the journey that changed his life forever.
"Because that incident interrupted our expedition, the Franklin River venture remained unfinished," he says.
"I don't know whether anyone has ever gone rafting with a prosthesis."
Arvydas would be at his side - and their rafting party may include a new member.
Jo has formed a strong bond with Valdas.
"Valdas is a tremendously strong, independent, accomplished person," he says.
"This idea that Valdas might want to come back and do the Franklin doesn't surprise me one little bit.
"And I'd love to do that trip with him."
- ABC