news.com.au: “Wheelchair-bound man left halfway up Mount Snowdon” [via whooz_queen]
A wheelchair-bound man suffered mild exposure after being abandoned halfway up a mountain by a group of charity climbers who gave up carrying him.
The 31-year-old man was left sitting on the steep and rocky Llanberis Path by the rest of his party of six, who were martial artists on a charity climb of Mount Snowdon in North Wales, the TimesOnline reports.
“The poor bloke was sitting there in his wheelchair for quite a while,” climber Dave Morrell, who witnessed the incident, told the TimesOnline. “It was a bit mean of them to leave him there while they carried on to the top. But other climbers went over to talk to him. He was just getting very cold.”
The man was met by his party during their descent but they pleaded exhaustion and called out a rescue team to carry him down. [...]
The rescue team said the call-out could have been avoided if the party had turned around with the wheelchair instead of continuing the ascent.
For background, groups assisting wheelchair users to climb Mount Snowdon is a regular occurrence – for example, the Snowdon Push is an event run by the Back-Up Trust, an sporting, activities, rehab, and youth organisation for people with spinal injuries.
The comments section has a few sensible people, but some awful, awful comments:
While this is very sad its about time people in the wheelchairs stop running around after cheap publicity .. it is unfortunate but they are incapacited .. Stay at home and deal with it !! Dont try to prove you are superhero !!!
While it’s unfortunate that the other climbers carried on without him, what in god’s name possessed a wheelchair person to attempt a mountain climb, and then expect fellow clombers to carry him all the way up? Dosen’t that defeat the purpose in climbing the mountain in the first place??
Where can be the pride of an individual who must be carried or pushed to extreme goals in which others must provide the actual work? I think it is quite selfish of the handicapped to attain their goals on the shoulders of others.
The second link for today comes from the Hucknall Dispatch in the UK: “Disabled woman (77) stranded in flat for SIX weeks“:
A disabled pensioner was marooned in her Hucknall flat for SIX WEEKS – and has now been barred from using her mobility scooter.
Evelyn Roussel says she has been “stripped of her independence” in a series of rows centred on the flat.
She has lived for eight years at the Titchfield Court warden-aided complex, off Watnall Road, run by Ashfield Homes on behalf of Ashfield District Council. The 77-year-old is crippled by osteoarthritis and cannot walk more than a few yards. She relies on a mobility scooter to get around.
But she was left stranded in her flat while a lift was replaced at the complex. She couldn’t even get her scooter out of the building to visit local shops and had to rely on her daughter, Celia Roussel, to carry out day-to-day errands.
Worse was to follow because, after the lift was repaired, she was told that the scooter could not be used in it because of a problem with “weight distribution”.
Now, in another twist, she says she has been given until Tuesday October 20 to get rid of the scooter altogether and is not even allowed to store it on the ground floor. It is claimed the scooter could be a health and safety hazard.
Evelyn told the Dispatch: “To say I am annoyed about this would be very mild. I feel it is so unfair. I feel like I am being penalised because I am less mobile than other people. Of all the people in the complex, I am usually one of the most independent. When I have my scooter, I can do everything myself. But without it, I would be stuck.”
Evelyn has used a mobility scooter for about 11 years. She says it has never been a problem at the complex before. [...]
* Quicklink to recent open threads
bluemilk: 
mindyhoyden: 
vivsmythe: 
CastIronBalcony: 
puzzlement: 
ChallyWrites: 
ilauredhel: 
People in wheelchairs are after cheap publicity? What goes on in some people’s heads? Surely there would be easier ways to get it than being stranded half way up a mountain? Those “charity” workers should be named and shamed. They are the incredibly selfish ones.
That poor woman in the UK is suffering for being a) old and b) having a disability. If it’s such an OH&S risk, find her a ground floor unit with scooter access. Problem solved.
I’m struggling to get my head around the monumental fail in leaving the guy on the mountain. That’s something you shouldn’t do to anyone. Full stop.
As for this: Dont try to prove you are superhero !!!
But… but… but… PWD are supposed to carry on bravely, and courageously, and do extraordinary things, or they won’t deserve any recognition. It’s a no-win for PWD.
*big sigh*
It doesn’t occur to some people that one would want to climb a mountain simply to enjoy the experience of being on top of a mountain and being overwhelmed by the great view?
I’m an especial fan of the idea that it’s his fault. Because having the temerity to want to climb Mt Snowdon when you’re in a wheelchair just logically ends up with other people being unreliable, unthinking, dishonest wankers.
Those “charity” workers should be named and shamed. They are the incredibly selfish ones.
We can do better than that. Mountain rescue comes under the heading of emergency services – and thus under the laws regarding frivolous call-outs. Since these six’s reasons amount to an inability to be arsed with the job they’d agreed to do (since they obviously weren’t too tired to climb a mountain), they’ve quite possibly broken those laws.
Also, I’d say leaving someone exposed on a mountainside is at least potentially a matter of criminal negligence, especially since it’s someone toward whom they had specifically accepted a responsibility.
If it’s such an OH&S risk, find her a ground floor unit with scooter access. Problem solved.
Precisely. Or install a lift that can do the job it ought to.
That poor woman in the UK is suffering for being a) old and b) having a disability. If it’s such an OH&S risk, find her a ground floor unit with scooter access. Problem solved.
Thanks Mindy, you’ve just given me the biggest laugh I’ve had for ages. I am a young British PWD and scooter user who has just such a flat. I was an “urgent” case on multiple waiting lists for years waiting for something to come up that was better than my then inaccessible and scooter-hostile flat and the only reason it took less than five years for me to be rehomed was because I was willing to a) take the first vacancy that came and b) move the length of the country from South Wales to central Scotland in order to take up the place and c) accept accommodation in a sheltered scheme meant for the elderly. There is a severe shortage of social housing in the UK which tends to be allocated and managed on a “beggars can’t be choosers” system.
No it wasn’t. It was totally f*cking unconscionable. First of all, if you’re climbing rough terrain in a wheelchair, you’re not sitting back idly being carried up, you’re forcing those wheels around yourself as well with considerable effort (obviously the commenter never watched Beyond Boundaries). Secondly, no-one in a wheelchair would even consider attempting this unless they thought they had the assurance of assistance not only helping them up but helping them down again. It must have been hideously embarrassing to be so let down by these inconsiderate wankers who decided their personal challenge was more important that someone’s personal safety.
So. Much. Fucking. RAGE!
Stabbity rage. What the shitting FUCK.
OK, I use a wheelchair (I prefer “wheelchair user” to “wheelchair bound” and had a letter to the editor published in the NYTimes in the mid1980s that “confined to wheelchair” is inaccurate – we sleep in beds), due to CFS/ME.
I shall have to read the article again and possibly again, as I had a bad night and am not fully cognitive. I have had experience in a blood lab waiting room that was wheelchair inaccessible to the section where blood was drawn, being told I was a
“fire hazzard”. I refused to leave until someone came down the steps to take my blood, but I didn’t go back (which was their goal). The city human rights commission did a lukewarm job of it, a letter was posted that we’d get service, and my name which was supposed to be “secret”, somehow resulted in my getting a letter from the near-monopoly private company….
“Crippen’s Blog” (google) had an entry last month on “making the disabled the problem”.
We aren’t going to disappear, although there’s a nagging movement of
“assisted suicide” for those of us who could be persuaded… See http://www.notdeadyet.org which is a great website.
There was a mag called “Disability Rag”, now mo rphed into “Ragged Edge” and online, in the 1980s that used the term “supercrip” about folks who can “do” mountains, and other achievements. Of course, there have been times that I have sat in my wheelchair estimating the physical cost of crawling up some steps of a public building, with spouse taking photos, but others have done it and I don’t have the stamina. I smile as I prepare to type, “We’re not going to take this stuff lying down.”. Humor goes a long way with this screwed up society/societies and messed up values (as in, we aren’t valued much)…
None of the people who complain about “political correctness run amok” can claim an ounce of credibility as long as assholes keep using terms like “wheelchair person” in a public forum without even a second thought.
The phrase “wheelchair person” doesn’t even make grammatical SENSE.
What the….? Gah! Stabbity!
This makes me sick. How can people do this stuff to each other. HOW.
The pathetic excuses for humans that abandoned that man on Snowden deserve a long prison term. I am getting sick and tired of people being treated like they are lower than animals because they don’t meet hegenomy-specified “norms”. Whether it is PWD, or trans folk, or POC, or … you name it.