Here is just one of the stories I tell in my article for Voices of Monterey Bay.
Another example of neighbors helping neighbors happened on Sunday morning. One of the amazing, hard-working volunteers with Big Sur Fire, Thomas Leahy, checked on a neighbor down by the Monterey/San Luis Obispo County line, where he found his neighbor on the floor. He called in the South Coast Engine crew, which showed up within a half hour.
They transported the patient to Ragged Point, whose lawn is used to land helicopters all the time. The firefighters spent most of the day on phones provided by Ragged Point, with one of them staying with the patient in a room that the business provided. These four firefighters — including Caleb Chesser, Joel DePola, Mike Handy and Leahy — spent all day trying to find a way to get this patient out of this closed and blocked off area and to a hospital.
Finally, after trying so many ways and people, the Army National Guard sent a helicopter that landed on the lawn of Ragged Point and flew the patient and his wife to a local hospital, where he remains as of this writing. It landed in the dark and rain. Hats off to this pilot and to our South Coast crew of the Big Sur Fire Department — neighbors helping each other.
To read the rest of the stories I tell about life on an island, see:
https://voicesofmontereybay.org/2023/01/19/a-winters-tale-on-the-south-coast/
