500-pound man rescued after river ordeal [View All]

MILWAUKEE - A 500-pound man injured while rafting down a shallow stretch of the St. Croix River was pulled to safety Tuesday by dozens of rescue workers who spent hours carrying him to a navigable part of the waterway.

Martin Rike, 39, of Pine City, Minn., was treated at the Burnett Medical Center in Grantsburg 12 hours after authorities first received reports that he had run aground.

Rike was rafting alone Monday afternoon about 70 miles northeast of Minneapolis and some 370 miles northwest of Milwaukee when he experienced an unspecified health problem, said Chief Deputy Steve Ovick of the Pine County Sheriff's Office in Minnesota. Rike left his raft and began walking but tumbled on the slippery, irregular rocks and injured an ankle and knee.
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"Every resource we had simply did not work until we got down to physical manpower," Ovick said. "The aircraft that found him said they could not lift that amount of weight."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19812539/