A high-altitude rescue team has set new standards in the Himalayas this season, performing the highest altitude rescue ever completed. On May 19th, a rescue team successfully got a mountaineer from near Camp 3 at 23,000 feet on Everest (珠穆朗玛峰). The climber named Gautam nearly reached the top but became extremely exhausted and seriously dehydrated (脱水的).

After a difficult and dangerous rescue，the team was able to successfully save Gautam’s life.

In an interview with Moro, the pilot of the rescue team, he said, "You have to be prepared, technically, physically,and also mentally (心理上).” He added, “The aim wasn’t to set a record but to save someone’s life. ”

The team has flown rescue tasks using Nepalese helicopters (直升飞机) for two years but had the idea to create a team with its own helicopter, which has been able to complete this season. The entire operation is privately financed，and according to Moro, “doesn’t cost the Italian or Nepalese tax-payer a single cent.” Moro also flies tasks for the local population for “free or at extremely reduced prices”.

Moro sees potential (潜力) for the increasing number of high altitude Himalayan rescue operations. In the future, he hopes to see more than one team , as well as a specialised team of climbers that would be able to perform rescues at altitudes and in weather condition that are impossible for helicopters.

Braving the elements

On Dec.26, Gelinne, 60, was looking out the back windows of his home at the frozen lake. Then an airplane came into his sight. Gelinne looked up just in time to see that small air plane a few hundred yards away, losing control.

As the plane disappeared behind the trees, Gelinne, a former Navy officer, realized it was going to land in the lake. He flashed on a moment from more than 20 years earlier: Gelinne was at work in a bank. When a fire alarm rang, he escaped from the chaos but has always wondered if he could have stayed inside and helped.

On this day, Gelinne didn’t hesitate. He ran down to the waterfront. The plane had skidded (侧滑) to a stop on the broad, frozen lake, far from shore. It was now sinking. The pilot was standing on the wing. Gelinne knew from his Navy training that even a few minutes in the icy water could kill the pilot.

Gelinne tested the ice with his foot and decided not to take any chances walking on it. So he pulled a boat out from under his back deck.

Then he set off, pushing his boat across the ice. It was tough work. When Gelinne reached the plane, it had broken through the ice and sunk; only its tail was visible. The pilot was standing on a tail wing, submerged up to his chest, surrounded by open water. Gelinne pushed his boat off the ice and into the water, paddling (划) toward the pilot.

Gelinne focused on keeping the pilot calm, joking, “Just hang on to the boat as if you were hugging your wife.” The pilot grabbed the boat’s bow, but Gelinne knew he had to get the pilot out of the water and up onto the shelf of unbroken ice behind him before the man lost too much body heat.

By now a police officer had arrived and radioed for help. A lifeboat appeared, breaking through ice as it arrived. It picked up the pilot and rushed him to safety. Later the boat returned to help Gelinne, now extremely tired, to shore.

“I’m 60 years old,” Gelinne says. “There was no way I could get him to shore.” Still, he was satisfied he’d gone the right way that day.

There is no way they just drove into that water, thought Corion Evans. The 16-year-old was hanging out with friends in a parking area underneath a Moss Point, highway in July when a car with three teenage girls inside fell into the Pascagoula River. It came to rest some 20 feet from land, then sank. The driver, Evans would learn, had blindly followed wrong directions from her GPS.

It was around 2:30 a. m. by the time Evans and brothers Karon and Caleh Bradley got to the river’s edge. In the darkness, they could barely make out the girls clinging to the roof, the only part of the car still, barely, above water. But they could hear screaming.

Evans took off his shirt and shoes, put his phone down, and then dived into the water, a river he knew alligators (鳄鱼) called home. He helped the first girl he saw and, keeping her head above water, led her ashore.

Just then, a man called out. Police Officer Garry Mercer had arrived. He dived into the river to help another of the girls. But halfway back to shore she panicked and went underwater, pulling Mercer down with her. Evans jumped back into the water and helped them until they could stand. “If he hadn’t been there, who knows?” Mercer told the Washington Post.

There was still one girl in the water. Cora Watson, 19, could not swim. She was gulping water, struggling to stay afloat. And scared.

“I heard Watson screaming ‘Help! And I thought she was done,” Caleh told WLOX in Biloxi.

“I just knew my last breath was coming,” Watson said. “My mind said, You’re slowly losing yourself.” She began to go under. Then, a surprise. “Corion had grabbed me.”

All of them were taken to the hospital and released. They’re alive because Corion Evans risked his life to save them. They’re alive, says his mother, Marquita Evans, because Corion Evans broke his curfew (宵禁). But she’s not mad, she told the Post, “He had a good reason.”