Yahoo News US tourist, 23, falls into Mount Vesuvius after selfie gone wrong
A group of tourists, including Philip Carroll, a 23-year-old American man from Baltimore, snuck up to the top of Italy's Mount Vesuvius through a forbidden area to take pictures this past Saturday, according to NBC News.
As Carroll tried to take a selfie, he dropped his phone into the mouth of the dangerous volcanic crater.
When Carroll went to retrieve the phone, he slipped and fell several meters, leaving him with significant scrapes and cuts along his back before he was able to regain his balance. However, Carroll had fallen deep enough into the volcano that he needed the help of rescuers to escape.
"This morning a tourist for reasons still to be determined, together with his family they ventured on a forbidden path, arrived on the edge of the crater and fell into the mouth of #Vesuvius," Gennaro Lametta, an official at Assoturismo Campania, an Italian tourism company, said in Facebook post on July 9.
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Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, Italy. (PA Images) |
Fortunately, some guides on the mountain saw Carroll from the opposite side of the crater with binoculars and rushed to his aid, pulling him to safety with a rope.
"Four volcanological guides set in motion instantly and, arriving on site, one of them was lowered with a rope for about 15 meters (49 feet) to allow them to secure the inexperienced tourist," Paolo Cappelli, president of the Presidio Permanente Vesuvio, a base for guides at the top of Vesuvius, told The Independent. "He was very lucky; if he kept going, he would have plunged 300 (984 feet) meters into the crater."
After his rescue and receiving first aid, Carroll and the other members of his party were taken into custody, facing charges in the country for "invading public land."
Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano in southern Italy near the city of Naples. The large crater at the volcano's center is about 1,000 feet deep and 1,500 feet across.
The volcano is famous for an eruption in 79 AD that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii; however, the volcano's last eruption occurred in 1944. It is still active but is in a state of repose, according to the Vesuvius National Park website.
Naples has experienced intense heat over the month of July, with temps rarely dropping lower than the mid- to upper-80s and even breaking into the mid-90s and low 100s. It's part of a larger, deadly heat wave that's currently building and starting to spread across Europe.
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