WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT: EXCLUSIVE: A British solider has been left in hospital in Thailand after slipping from a cliff while innocently taking a picture leaving him with a ‘shattered’ skull
A British armed forces serviceman was left fearing for his life after suffering a near-fatal fall in Thailand. Royal Electrical and Engineers (REME) serviceman Liam Gibson, 21, waited an agonising two hours for a rescue operation after slipping around the Na Muang Waterfall 2 in the Ko Samui District area of Thailand on April 12.
Now, the serviceman who has been in the armed forces for five years has now spent three weeks in a Thailand hospital after sustaining broken bones in his leg, his face and skull. After the fall, Liam was left “bleeding out”. After a rescue mission was underway, it took Liam five hours to be transferred to hospital for emergency life saving surgery.
Now, Liam’s family are hoping to raise vital funds via GoFundMe in order to fund a medical jet flight back to the UK, for Liam to undergo more life changing surgery on his femur. Speaking to the Mirror, Liam’s girlfriend, Lucy revealed that she and her partner had seen the stunning location on social media and instantly wanted to visit.
“There’s a lot of advertisement, especially on social media to go there for it being quite a fun day out.” Lucy, from Hartlepool, said. She added: “We didn’t see the bad side of it until after this happened and we properly looked into the place. The place itself should be shut down. There needs to be more awareness of how dangerous this place can be.
“If not shut down, it needs some form of barriers or railings, or something.” Recalling the moment Liam fell, she explained: “He’d just been innocently taking a picture and his feet have come from underneath him. It’s just been completely smooth rock and he kept sliding, picking up speed towards the edge.
“There was nothing he could have grabbed. It took two hours for the rescue to get to us. That was genuinely the two longest hours of our life.”
A local man came to the rescue of Lucy and Liam and instantly called for a rescue team. Liam, however, didn’t fall to the bottom of the waterfall, instead, he fell to a “bit of rock sticking out half way down”. “If he’d have fell the whole distance, he’d have died on the spot,” Lucy recalled.
Lucy had desperately attempted to ensure Liam wouldn’t fall further. “It was two hours of trying to keep him with me, he was coming in and out of consciousness,” she said before explaining her boyfriend was “bleeding out fast”.
She added: “We had to try and tie things around his wounds to stop bleeding out. He just kept saying ‘How long are they going to be? I’m going to die’, it was taking that long – I started to think ‘Are they actually coming?'”
After waiting five hours for Liam to be rushed to hospital, Lucy admits she was “drained”. Lucy said: “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life. To have the stress of the minute we got to the hospital, it was so much chaos.”
She was left blown away when the medical staff presented card machines for treatment payment. However, she stressed that she and Liam couldn’t be more grateful for the treatment he received and is continuing to receive. “He was in an absolute state needing immediate surgery on his skull and his face,” she said.
Lucy added: “I can’t put any blame on the hospital at all. They’ve been absolutely amazing this whole time.” Two days after Liam’s fall, his mum and nan flew out to Thailand to offer support.
“Physically he is healing quite well and getting better every day, apart from his leg – we’re waiting for him to get back to the UK for the main surgery on his femur to fix that,” she said.
But the mission to get Liam back to the UK is costly, with the family having to charter a specific flight which would require doctors and nurses to be on board the flight. Since being hospitalised, Liam has undergone three major surgeries and multiple transfusions, as well as being administered various antibiotics and medications to assist his condition.
Although a GoFundMe page has been launched, Lucy admits this was a last resort but as the days pass, Liam’s medical bill continues to rise. Following the heartbreaking fall, Liam was left with a shattered femur in three places, a broken arm, a shattered left hand, shattered eye socket, cheek bone, nose and skull.
Click here to donate to Liam’s GoFundMe page.
