{"id":67063,"date":"2016-07-26T14:39:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T20:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-woman-rescued-by-helicopter-from-engineer-mountain\/"},"modified":"2016-07-26T20:39:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T20:39:31","slug":"durango-woman-rescued-by-helicopter-from-engineer-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-woman-rescued-by-helicopter-from-engineer-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango woman rescued by helicopter from Engineer Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Flight
Flight For Life was called Monday to bring a 64-year-old woman experiencing health complications on Engineer Mountain to Mercy Regional Medical Center. Joni Bender was experiencing classic symptoms of altitude sickness, but they have all gone away, said her husband, Dan Bender, who is also spokesman for the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/span>Cortez Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A Durango woman was rescued by helicopter Monday from Engineer Mountain after experiencing health complications.<\/p>\n

Jon \u201cJoni\u201d Bender, 64, was in good spirits and undergoing tests Monday at Mercy Regional Medical Center, said her husband, Dan Bender, who is also spokesman for the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office and has assisted in numerous regional rescues.<\/p>\n

Dan Bender, who was not with his wife at the time of the incident, said she was hiking with two church friends when she blacked out, possibly from altitude sickness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSearch and rescue had a classical quick response,\u201d Bender said. \u201cWe were thankful for all of the efforts involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emergency workers were notified about noon of the situation, and they had a helicopter in the air at about 12:10 p.m. Because of the high elevation, the helicopter had to hover for a while to burn off fuel before loading the patient, said Butch Knowlton, director of La Plata County Search and Rescue.<\/p>\n

Joni Bender had trouble walking to the helicopter, but she ultimately was able to make it onboard with some assistance, he said. The helicopter took off about 1:10 p.m. en route for Mercy Regional Medical Center.<\/p>\n

Emergency responders considered closing U.S. Highway 550 near the top of Coal Bank Pass for safety reasons while the helicopter was in the area, but the highway remained open, Knowlton said.<\/p>\n

Joni Bender regularly hikes in the area, but usually not at such a high elevation, which was over 12,000 feet, Dan Bender said. After blacking out, she couldn\u2019t stand and had difficulty breathing. \u201cThose symptoms have all pretty well gone away,\u201d Dan Bender said shortly before 4 p.m. Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s thankful for having friends with her that were able to keep cool heads and request help,\u201d Dan Bender said. \u201cShe\u2019s thankful for the helicopter crew and search-and-rescue people that responded.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a joint operation between San Juan and La Plata county search-and-rescue crews.<\/p>\n

Knowlton said the patient was on a plateau on the east side of Engineer Mountain. \u201cFortunately enough, the Flight for Life aircraft was able to get in to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Altitude sickness hit on hike with church friends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5484,13,1807],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-67063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-engineer-mountain","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67063"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=67063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}