LONGARONE. They had given him up for dead, even in the communication to the family. But that of the rescuers, who are working in very difficult conditions, was a terrible misunderstanding: Giacomo Sacchet, the 43-year-old from Zoldo who did not return home after a canyoning excursion in the Maè stream, is alive. Scared and hypothermic, but alive. The searches by the Alpine Rescue, the Fire Brigade, the Guardia di Finanza and the Carabinieri were started yesterday evening (Sunday 5 September) and were resumed this morning. At around 10 am, the team of the Veneto Alpine and Speleological Rescue Gorge Group had found the ropes that descended stuck in a pool that was unapproachable by the force of the current.
When the rescuers had tried to pull them, they had unhooked from the harness, forcing them to organize themselves to face a very risky and perhaps impossible recovery with that reach in four cubic meters of water. The team then equipped itself with a six-meter long harpoon, to try to probe the tank, while they proceeded with the request for the almost total closure of the minimum vital flow of the Pontesei dam upstream.
The moment one of the rescuers had approached the stream with a frontal to try to look beyond the waterfall, he had glimpsed a foot and then the man’s face. He was alive, leaving everyone moved. Giacomo had descended from the waterfall yesterday around 10 am. Dragged down by the stream, he was able to hook himself to the rock with one hand and was pushed by the current into a cave of a couple of meters, where he had been since yesterday morning. When he felt himself being pulled, he unhooked the ropes thinking they might be useful and he approached the waterfall, at the very moment when a rescuer was looking in his direction, only because he was convinced he had seen a backpack. The rescuers then managed to pass him a rope, with which he secured himself to the harness and, with all the strength in their possession, they dragged him over the flow of the waterfall and out of the current of the pool. Recovered by winch from the Suem di Pieve di Cadore helicopter, Giacomo was transported to the Belluno hospital for the necessary checks. The helicopter then proceeded to recover the team as well. “We are sorry to have contributed to spreading the sad initial news, but we could never have hoped for this extraordinary outcome”, writes the mountain rescue
.