No Lifting

Christopher Rooney, the first senior firefighter on the scene, told an official inquiry that firefighters could have saved Alison Hume, a woman who had fallen down an abandoned mine shaft in Scotland. But safety rules said that firefighters could not use their lifting equipment on civilians. It could only be used on fellow firefighters, so they stood there, listening to here cries for help, for six hours until a mountain rescue team arrived. Hume died of a heart attack as they were pulling her from the mine shaft.