Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Human Fireball in the Mountains of Patagonia About this episode A young New Zealander joins an intrepid crew carving mountain bike trails through the mountains and valleys of Patagonia, Chile. But with just a month left to go on the job before he returns home, a freak accident threatens Jamie Nicoll’s hopes of ever seeing his loved ones again. While drilling into a wall of rock using a jackhammer, a sudden malfunction in the machine results in a violent eruption of flames. Jamie will find himself directly in the line of fire…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:29 John Hopkins? It is October the 8th, 2010. A crisp spring morning beams down over Lago La Paloma, a lake in Patagonia, Chile.
0:40 John Hopkins? In its mirrored surface, the surrounding peaks are as clear as photographs. They're snow-capped reflections almost as vivid as the real thing.
0:51 John Hopkins? Overhead, a condor circles, riding the air currents.
0:57 John Hopkins? At the far end of the lake, beyond a stretch of evergreen forest, the valley climbs upwards through a series of slopes and ledges, becoming narrower until it's a tall ravine with steep, rocky mountain walls on either side.
1:14 John Hopkins? Up here, the serenity is shattered by the din of heavy machinery.
1:21 John Hopkins? Members of a work crew, suspended in harnesses, are drilling into the walls of the ravine, their power tools gouging out splinters of dark granite.
1:32 John Hopkins? Jamie Nicoll can feel the reverberations deep in his bones.
1:37 John Hopkins? The 31-year-old New Zealander is using a petrol-powered rock breaker to carve a path into the side of the mountain.
1:45 John Hopkins? When it's finished, the path will become part of a spectacular mountainback trail, linking the lake below with the grassland above.
1:55 John Hopkins? As he works, Jamie feels a drop of liquid fall onto his leg.
2:01 John Hopkins? Frowning, he switches off the tool and touches a finger to the dark splotch on his trousers. He sniffs it and recoils.
2:11 John Hopkins? It's petrol.
2:14 Speaker 02 And I thought, oh, that's a bit strange. I grabbed the fuel cap and sort of gave it a tweak to see if it was a bit loose or something and carried on.
2:24 John Hopkins? Jamie continues drilling.
2:27 John Hopkins? Barely a minute has passed, however, before he notices more petrol dripping onto his thigh. He shakes his head. Must be a problem with the fuel cap.
2:38 John Hopkins? He turns off the machine and edges sideways along the cliff to a narrow shelf where he and his colleagues have set up a supply station.
2:47 John Hopkins? He leans his shoulder against the wall, pulls off his ear defenders and bends down to inspect the fuel cap. Maybe the seal's broken. He unscrews the cap, turning the black plastic disc once, twice, and then...
3:06 Speaker 02 As that undid, it just blew the cap out in my hand and this massive pressurized plume of atomized fuel just went up into the air. The boys on the other side of the ravine looked over and they said it was about seven to 10 meter high plume of atomized fuel, just a big white cloud went up.
3:27 John Hopkins? There is a loud pop as fuel bursts out of the giant drill, sending an enormous diffuse pillar into the air.
3:36 John Hopkins? In an instant, Jamie is swallowed by the shimmering cloud of vaporized petrol.
3:41 Speaker 02 I had my eyes squeezed shut and I was just starting to spit out and just trying to say, "Give me some water" because it was kind of stinging in my eyes, this fuel. And I didn't even get the words out, "Give me some water" and it was like, just a big sound and all of that atomized fuel just ignited.
4:13 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
4:34 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet Jamie Nicoll. In late 2010, the 31-year-old is part of a construction crew building a mountain bike trail through a rugged alpine valley in Patagonia, Chile. With about a month to go until the contract ends, Jamie is looking forward to finishing the job and returning home to New Zealand, where his family and girlfriend are waiting for him. But on the morning of October 8th, while operating heavy machinery, a freak accident threatens his hopes of ever seeing his loved ones again.
5:04 Speaker 02 And as I jumped away from this burning cloud and all flames and swung through the air because then I was like falling and swinging, I was like, "Oh no, I am the fire."
5:16 John Hopkins? Swinging from a harness above a ravine, burning alive in a ball of flames, Jamie's survival chances appear as remote as the isolated valley he's working in.
5:27 Speaker 02 I remember quite calmly thinking, "Oh, I don't really see any way out of this. This could be one of those times you die."
5:35 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:04 John Hopkins? It's the morning of October 8th, 2010, near the banks of Lago La Paloma in the Isen region of southern Chile.
6:12 John Hopkins? A group of mountain bikers are pedaling through an evergreen forest. Loaded with packs full of construction tools, the cyclists bob and weave, riding out of their saddles, thigh muscles burning, lungs aflame. These men are all employees of a trail management company from New Zealand hired to build a bike track through the Patagonian wilderness.
6:36 John Hopkins? At the front of the pack is crew leader Jamie Nicoll. The 31-year-old has been working for New Zealand Trail Solutions for the past year.
6:46 John Hopkins? In that time, he's built trails in Mexico, Canada, and now here, deep in the back country of southern Chile.
6:55 Speaker 02 They had that contract from Ken Dart, an American billionaire, who discovered mountain biking in his 50s and thought it'd be pretty cool to buy a few properties and get people to build tracks for him.
7:09 John Hopkins? For an avid mountain biker like Jamie, this is an ideal gig. A chance to work outdoors with his hands, building infrastructure for a sport he loves, even if it is for the private enjoyment of a billionaire.
7:24 John Hopkins? Above the tree line, the terrain steepens. Granite peaks rise above their heads, dark walls streaked with ribbons of ice, slowly melting in the spring sunshine. Pockets of avalanche debris rest in the gullies.
7:41 John Hopkins? The crew presses on, riding their bikes along yards of freshly laid trail.
7:47 John Hopkins? After a while, they reach the bottom of a craggy ravine, a deep, narrow scar running through the massive.
7:55 John Hopkins? A series of short waterfalls leads up to the ridgeline, beyond which a stretch of grassland extends towards the next valley.
8:03 John Hopkins? The workers step off their bikes and leave them by the side of the trail.
8:08 John Hopkins? Jamie looks up at the vertical granite sides of the gorge. This is their next challenge: to carve a ledge into the rock face so the bike trail can continue up through the ravine to the grassland above.
8:24 Speaker 02 We thought with a bit of work, we could probably open that up to being more accessible, where someone could push a mountain bike through to then carry on and access the grassland to go for a bit of a tour that way. So that was really my job, was to try and cut a ledge through this ravine.
8:46 John Hopkins? The men begin unpacking their gear.
8:50 John Hopkins? In total, Jamie is in charge of a crew of fifteen men. There is a certain irony to a group of mountain bikers working so closely together in a team. It's a marked change of pace from their highly individualized sport.
9:06 John Hopkins? In fact, this aspect of mountain biking is why it first appealed to Jamie. The state of being alone, cycling with just the sound of his own breathing for company.
9:17 John Hopkins? Growing up in the suburbs of Wellington, he was always drawn to activities that allowed him to get lost in his own little world.
9:24 Speaker 02 Dad had really encouraged us to play soccer and I just always wanted to be subbed, you know, so that I could go climb the trees and play in the stream around the area. So I think for me, mountain biking, that's your own mission a little bit.
9:38 John Hopkins? Mountain biking ticked all the boxes for this adventurous, outdoorsy kid. It helped that he had a natural talent for it. It wasn't long before Jamie was competing at a high level, winning international competitions and carving out a name for himself on the junior circuit. One success led to another. Within a few years, he was on course for a career as a professional mountain biker. But as the accolades mounted, so did the pressure to perform. He found himself losing sight of what had attracted him to the sport in the first place.
10:11 Speaker 02 Of course I was good. I had people in New Zealand that were supposedly helping to streamline people towards being professional athletes and, you know, telling me that I should wear better clothing and things at prize giving and different stuff. And, you know, it's like the wrong thing to tell an independent, maybe slightly rebellious teenager. So, I don't know, all of that started tainting the picture for me.
10:35 John Hopkins? Jamie took a step back from mountain biking, leaving him with enough free time to pursue other burgeoning interests. After high school, he took a vocational course in outdoor education, which trained him in a variety of disciplines, from kayaking and caving to rock climbing and mountaineering. After that, he joined a ski patrol team in the mountains of the North Island, before heading overseas to Europe and Asia, where he travelled and worked odd jobs for a few years, going wherever the mood struck.
11:06 John Hopkins? If freedom is what he was searching for, then surely this was it.
11:12 John Hopkins? But as the years passed, Jamie only found himself with more questions.
11:17 Speaker 02 It was a bit challenging for me in my late twenties, being like, oh, what am I? And, you know, do I need to do some special training so that I get some sort of label? But what would that be? I don't know.
11:30 John Hopkins? After returning to New Zealand following his years abroad, Jamie found himself stumbling back into something familiar. The very activity, in fact, that had made him resist the idea of labels in the first place. While working as a park ranger on the west coast of the South Island, he received a call one day from a childhood friend. She presented him with an opportunity.
11:53 Speaker 02 Her current partner had got these contracts of building mountain bike tracks all over the world. She rang me up and she was like, what do you think about this, Jamie? And I was like, sounds so good. Got to go and spend some time with my girlfriend. I've been down here on the west coast for too long. And so, yeah, finished that job and went back up to Nelson and sort of got back into that connection with my partner. And then six months later, I was like, oh, what do you think? I think I might like to go and do this job. And she was like, you can do it.
12:26 John Hopkins? And so, with his girlfriend's blessing, Jamie set off once again.
12:32 John Hopkins? Building mountain bike trails, it turned out, was the perfect way to bring together his unique set of skills and experience. A job tailor-made for him. The first project was in the desert of northern Mexico, followed by a three-month stint down in southern Chile.
12:48 Speaker 02 I remember coming into land and just seeing this landscape of tussocks and mountains and just sparsely populated. And that kind of tickled me. I like places that are kind of remote, so it looked pretty cool.
13:02 John Hopkins? After Chile, it was up to Canada for two months. When that project ended, Jamie was offered another contract, a six-week stint back down in Patagonia.
13:15 John Hopkins? This time, however, he hesitated. He'd now been working overseas for almost a year, and the demands on both his time and his body were starting to get to him. But then it was only a short-term contract. One last job.
13:32 Speaker 02 I do remember, though, being a little bit tired on a deeper level and just wanting to be back in New Zealand and get that recharge of my homeland. But I was like, "Ah, it's just six weeks. I'll be all right. Go and do the six weeks."
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14:13 John Hopkins? It's the morning of October the 8th. Jamie sits in his harness suspended 30 feet above the ground. He's using a petrol-powered rock breaker to chisel away the granite, making a start on what will eventually be a bike trail carved into the side of this ravine.
14:30 John Hopkins? The bright yellow rock breaker is large and heavy, about the size of a chainsaw. It's unwieldy, and Jamie has to balance the bulky chassis on his thigh while the drill bit vibrates against the rock.
14:45 Speaker 02 I had the machine then and was cutting into this cliff and noticed a bit of fuel had, like, dripped on my leg. And I thought, "Oh, that's a bit strange." I grabbed the fuel cap and sort of gave it a tweak to see if it just was a bit loose or something, and carried on.
15:03 John Hopkins? But after a few moments, Jamie notices it again.
15:07 John Hopkins? A steady drip of gasoline leaking from the fuel cap onto his leg.
15:12 Speaker 02 So I turned the machine off, lowered myself down onto the ledge and then just walked back to the other end where we had our bags and a fuel.
15:21 John Hopkins? Still roped up and strapped into his harness, Jamie sidesteps along the ledge to the flat, narrow shelf where they've based their supply station.
15:30 John Hopkins? He removes his ear defenders and inspects the leaky fuel cap. No obvious issues, must be something else. So he starts unscrewing the black plastic cap.
15:42 John Hopkins? He gives it a couple of quick twists, two complete turns, and then there's a loud, sharp, sudden hiss.
15:53 Speaker 02 As that undead, it just blew the cap out in my hand and this massive pressurized plume of atomized fuel just went up into the air.
16:04 John Hopkins? Some malfunction inside the machine must have caused the fuel vapors to expand, creating a dangerous buildup of pressure within the tank. When Jamie unscrews the cap, he is engulfed in a pungent haze of vaporized fuel.
16:19 John Hopkins? The rank chemical taste of petrol coats his tongue. With his stinging eyes squeezed shut, he shouts to his colleagues to get him some water. He needs to wash this stuff off his face.
16:30 Speaker 02 I didn't even get the words out, "Give me some water" and it was like, boom, just a big sound and all of that atomized fuel just ignited.
16:42 John Hopkins? It doesn't take much, just a spark of static electricity and the plume of atomized fuel becomes a column of flame reaching 30 feet up, with Jamie at the heart of it, encased in a straitjacket of blistering heat.
16:58 Speaker 02 It's like, I need to get away from this and I was still tied on to these ropes and harnesses and so I just jumped away from the machine because I knew I could just jump off the cliff below me and I'd be fine because I'm all tied on these ropes. And as I jumped away from this burning cloud and all flames and swung through the air because then I was like falling and swinging, I was like, oh no, I am the fire.
17:25 John Hopkins? Drenched in fuel, he's been lit up like an effigy. And now he's swinging above the ravine, thirty feet up, burning alive in midair.
17:36 Speaker 02 I remember quite calmly thinking, oh, I can't really see any way out of this. This could be one of those times you die.
18:00 John Hopkins? It's mid-morning, high in the mountains of Patagonia. Overlooking a pristine alpine lake, a blazing fireball swings from a rope across a deep, narrow ravine.
18:12 John Hopkins? At its white-hot centre, secured in a harness anchored to the cliffside, is Jamie Nicoll.
18:19 Speaker 02 I just couldn't see any way out of it. You're like, there's no rolling on the ground, there's no running into the water. You're like tied on to a rope hanging off a cliff and you're burning.
18:34 John Hopkins? The fire sounds like wind rushing in his ears, a low, billowing roar. He can feel the intensity of the blaze increasing as the flames feed hungrily on his petrol-soaked clothing and skin.
18:49 John Hopkins? And yet, oddly, even now, in the seconds before he surely burns to death, a strange sense of detachment settles over him.
19:00 Speaker 02 I was like, oh, it's just pretty plain. Oh, this could be one of those times you die, was the thought. And so, it was a very calm moment and then swung, swung through, smacked into the cliff quite hard. And then, I think really a sort of panic set in.
19:20 John Hopkins? The calm of a moment ago has gone, replaced by horror and heat, searing, incandescent heat.
19:30 John Hopkins? With his nerve endings screaming, Jamie tries to rip off his t-shirt, tearing at the fabric, but it won't budge.
19:36 Speaker 02 As I pulled it, I was like, oh, I've got a full body harness on, that's not coming off. There's no way out of this. I'm burning. And so I was just lifting my head up and was just smacking at my face to try and protect my airway and keep the flames off it. And then I was yelling out to my mate, "Help, help, help."
19:56 John Hopkins? He thrashes wildly, jerking and twisting in his harness. Flames flicker up past his chin, singeing the strap of his helmet. When they reach his eyelashes, the air thickens with the acrid stench of burning hair. The nylon waistband of his shorts starts to melt, fusing with his body. Bubbling red blisters form on his skin. He's being cooked alive.
20:22 Speaker 02 I was like, man, no one's gonna help me in the time that I've got. So I've got to do something about getting out of this situation.
20:30 John Hopkins? Direct exposure to open flame can cause life-threatening third-degree burns in just seconds.
20:38 John Hopkins? Jamie has been engulfed for almost half a minute.
20:43 John Hopkins? However much he beats the fire with his hands and arms, he can't seem to extinguish it. He's got to try something else.
20:51 John Hopkins? Maybe if he can remove his t-shirt, he can get the blaze under control. But that will mean removing both his helmet and his harness first.
21:00 Speaker 02 I just went down into the flames, put my head into the flames, bent over, bent my head over and started undoing the helmet.
21:08 John Hopkins? With his head tilted down towards the flames, Jamie fiddles furiously with the clasp of his chin strap. Pulsing waves of heat radiate into his face as he pours his focus into this one small task. Once the chin strap is undone, he can start to remove his harness and his clothes.
21:31 John Hopkins? But before he can finish taking off his helmet,
21:35 John Hopkins? everything stops.
21:40 John Hopkins? The flames abruptly disappear, flickering out with barely a whisper.
21:46 John Hopkins? The echo of their roar fades to silence, as if they were never there at all.
21:52 John Hopkins? Dazed, Jamie looks down.
21:56 John Hopkins? His shirt has disintegrated completely. That'll be why the fire vanished. It had already devoured its main source of fuel, burned itself out.
22:07 John Hopkins? It's a monumental relief. But then Jamie looks at the damage the fire has caused.
22:14 Speaker 02 My arms, I just remember it being like grey and like rolled up paper, as if someone had wet some paper and rubbed it for too long and it had just sort of all started coming apart. And I looked at my hands and they were kind of wet looking in a way, and I guess because I'd lost a lot of skin.
22:34 John Hopkins? His body hangs in the harness, slumped against the rock. The burns on his torso glisten like fresh paint. The outer layer of skin seared away to reveal the seeping red tissue underneath. He can just about hear dim voices bouncing off the walls of the ravine. His colleagues presumably, telling him to sit tight, that help is on its way.
23:00 John Hopkins? But Jamie isn't in the mood to hang about.
23:06 Speaker 02 I was like, man, I do not want to wait around. You have that window when the body's pumped you with adrenaline and things and that's the time to act.
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23:39 John Hopkins? He points his gaze down beyond his dangling gun boots. A stream of snowmelt trickles down through the gorge, collecting in divots and crags along the ravine's staggered sloping floor.
23:53 John Hopkins? About thirty feet below him is a sparkling glacial pool. Before the adrenaline subsides and the pain becomes unbearable, Jamie resolves to move.
24:05 John Hopkins? He grabs hold of the rope with his raw, weeping fingers and starts shifting his weight from side to side, eventually generating enough momentum to swing himself across to the ledge.
24:17 John Hopkins? He lands unsteadily on the rocky shelf. Quickly, he unclips the carabiners, untethering himself from the cliff face. Then he peers down at the water below, separated from him by a series of small drops, three or four meters high. Without pausing to second-guess himself, Jamie jumps, hurling himself down the center of the ravine, all the way down to the water.
24:45 Speaker 02 I just jumped underneath that and this pool and was just hit by the freezing, freezing water and then chilled by this ice and there was part of me like, this is good. But then the cold hit me and so it's this quite interesting thing of being burnt. But then the next kind of pain was being chilled so extremely.
25:09 John Hopkins? Extreme heat and extreme cold. To a human body under stress, the two sensations aren't so different.
25:17 John Hopkins? To panicked pain receptors, both burn, as if a million sharp needles are being driven into the skin.
25:26 John Hopkins? Jamie gasps, writhing beneath the onslaught. He scrambles to his feet, unable to bear being submerged.
25:34 John Hopkins? Instead, he takes off his helmet and uses it like a bucket, scooping water from the pool and dumping it all over his blistered face, neck, arms, and torso. The cold shock is still agonizing, but it's more tolerable like this, less intense.
25:52 John Hopkins? He keeps going, dousing his burns over and over.
25:58 John Hopkins? Meanwhile, two of his colleagues make their way down to him. They tell him that somebody's already radioed for an air ambulance. That's the good news. Then comes the bad.
26:10 John Hopkins? They can't just wait here for help to arrive. They need to get to the lodge all the way over on the other side of the lake, where the helipad is located.
26:20 John Hopkins? Jamie tries to pay attention. But as the adrenaline wears off, the pain intensifies.
26:30 Speaker 02 I pulled off my gun boots. I'm shirtless. My skin's all, like, peeling off. The tops of my shorts are all melted.
26:38 John Hopkins? The idea that Jamie can go anywhere right now is crazy. But there is no other choice.
26:46 John Hopkins? His colleagues explain the outrageous plan.
26:50 John Hopkins? They need to run.
26:53 John Hopkins? To travel the two kilometers on foot through the woods back to the lake, where a boat will take them across to the lodge.
27:02 John Hopkins? It may only be just over a mile, but Jamie is half naked and half burned to death. Right now, it's an almost inconceivable distance. Still, the guy's restless feet into a pair of shoes he can run in. Then, flanked by his two coworkers, he sets off down the trail.
27:22 Speaker 02 We're just running, running through forest and it's kind of real consistent jog through there, just with this real pain of burning around the neck and shoulders.
27:33 John Hopkins? The forest floor is carpeted with fallen pine needles.
27:38 John Hopkins? Sunlight streams down through the branches, dappling the ground beneath Jamie's stumbling feet.
27:44 John Hopkins? Through the canopy, the tops of the mountains are occasionally visible. Huge granite pyramids enclosing the valley.
27:52 John Hopkins? Now the world darkens at the edges as Jamie's vision contracts to a pinhole.
28:00 Speaker 02 Always carried that capacity to focus and push through adversity and pain and things like that. So that was just what had to happen.
28:14 John Hopkins? Everything else falls away. The mountains, the sky, the forest.
28:19 John Hopkins? All that's left is the trail, snaking through the trees, and the lake, a pale blue band glimmering just beyond the curve of the forest floor.
28:30 John Hopkins? Step by step, they wind through the towering trunks until the forest thins out and they reach the water's edge. The rest of the work crew has already congregated on the shingle beach, their mountain bikes lying beside them, tyres coated in fresh mud.
28:47 John Hopkins? They greet Jamie with words of encouragement, assuring him that everything will be okay. Though their fearful faces tell a different story.
28:57 John Hopkins? For his part, Jamie fights to remain upbeat.
29:01 Speaker 02 And I even remember joking to some of them like, "Oh yeah, got pretty sunburned, eh?" Like this while I'm sort of standing there on the lakeside. I think that's part of my sense of humour too. It's like, when things are bad, you can still see some funny things in those situations too.
29:22 John Hopkins? Humour can only carry him so far though. After a few minutes, he hears the roar of an approaching motorboat.
29:31 Speaker 02 This guy Javier, one of the Chilean people workers on that, he came screaming in in the jet boat, really hard on the beach, like he knew it was serious. And I jumped in and the look on his face and his inhalation of his breath was kind of the first time I'd really had a reflection of my situation. Because I think, you know, I could look down a little bit, but you're not really seeing what's happened as such, you know? And so that kind of hit me as being like, "Oh, I mustn't look that good."
30:09 John Hopkins? There'll be time to assess the extent of his burns later. For now, Jamie just needs to stay focused on the mission. Get to the lodge, wait for the helicopter, get to hospital.
30:22 John Hopkins? There, hopefully, he'll be given something to dull the pain. Right now, the wind whipping off the surface of the lake feels like acid against his skin.
30:33 Speaker 02 At that point, I just couldn't stand stealth. I was like, just kind of dancing around because just dealing with the pain of the burns. They'd brought me a wet sheet to put over me, but I was really cold, you know, even though I'd run through the mountains, I hadn't really warmed up.
30:53 John Hopkins? Finally, the boat pulls up to the wooden dock.
30:57 John Hopkins? With the assistance of others, Jamie hobbles up the long gravel drive that leads to the lodge, an impressive timber building perched on a bluff above the lake.
31:08 John Hopkins? Jamie is led to an outdoor deck area where a small crowd has gathered.
31:14 John Hopkins? Dozens of faces turn toward him, eyes widening in alarm.
31:19 John Hopkins? Apparently, there were no rescue helicopters available, but as luck would have it, a guest staying here at the lodge happened to know someone stationed at the nearby military base.
31:29 John Hopkins? They were able to call in a few favors. The chopper is on its way.
31:35 John Hopkins? Jamie is at once stung by burns and bitten by cold as he trembles and shivers and his teeth chatter together.
31:44 John Hopkins? Then, amid all the commotion, a stranger steps forward and speaks softly to him, offering words of comfort.
31:53 Speaker 02 And then this woman, I don't know what she did, but she was just there in my vision, in my space. And yeah, she was like a little bit of an angel in that moment of like calmness, that feminine quality, I guess, the care.
32:11 John Hopkins? Heat-related injuries are among the most complex and devastating the human body can sustain. There is the risk of infection, septic shock, respiratory failure, organ shutdown. The list goes on.
32:25 John Hopkins? Jamie doesn't know this yet, but he has suffered third-degree burns to thirty-five percent of his body. Anything over thirty percent carries a high risk of death, even with rapid and expert treatment.
32:39 John Hopkins? Severe burn victims are given a narrow window of time in which to receive lifesaving intervention. Outside that window, survival chances plummet.
32:49 John Hopkins? For Jamie, the clock is rapidly ticking down.
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33:16 John Hopkins? Jamie squints up at the sky as the chopper comes into land, the rotor wash blasting aside debris from the surface of the helipad. A doctor in a white coat jumps out and runs over. He asks a couple of questions, but Jamie struggles to hear over the roar of the craft.
33:34 John Hopkins? There's no more time to waste.
33:37 John Hopkins? The doctor hurries Jamie on board and the helicopter whisks him to the nearest hospital in the town of Koheiike, about twenty miles north.
33:46 Speaker 02 We landed right outside the hospital and I stepped out and lay straight onto a wheeled stretcher. And I remember being wheeled around the chopper and then going into some doors. And then that's all I remember.
34:03 Speaker 02 I hadn't been given any drugs or anything at this point, but obviously something, some memory loss that's been wiped from there because I would have been conscious and present. I asked those doors up until they put me into an induced coma, but I don't remember anything after going through those doors.
34:26 John Hopkins? From this point on, Jamie's recollections end.
34:31 John Hopkins? While he's in his medically induced coma, the doctors and nurses work around the clock to keep him alive. For a while, it's touch and go. His body is in a state of turmoil as his system tries to fight off the cascade of infection and shock, threatening to shut it down.
34:50 John Hopkins? But eventually, he stabilises. And two weeks later.
34:57 Speaker 02 I woke up and just like the movies, the beeping machines and the heart rates and all that going in your room and you're plugged in with tubes all over you and some tube coming out of my chest and all these bandages on me.
35:17 John Hopkins? Jamie blinks around at the overlit ward in the ICU. The faces of the blurry figures around his bed slowly sharpen into focus.
35:27 Speaker 02 And then my girlfriend and I think my mother were, yeah, both of them were standing around me when I came lucid. And I don't remember what anyone said, actually.
35:38 Speaker 02 That's not something that sits with me at the moment. I think I was not awake for very long.
35:48 John Hopkins? Although he's stable for now, his condition remains extremely serious. Swaddled in thick bandages, he spends days drifting in and out of consciousness, dosed up on morphine, while medical staff busy themselves around him.
36:04 Speaker 02 These bandages were crazy, like you're just like a Michelin man. Your body's just leaking, leaking white blood cells, plasma. So in the days after that, you just go through these times of getting very sleepy and weak. I think that's the part that's quite impactful about the whole event is kind of realising your fragility. There's something that came home really heavily in the hospital, realising that you're only alive because someone kept coming into your room and fiddling with your machine or pumping more blood into you. You're only alive because other people are caring for you and looking after you. And that's quite a strange experience.
36:52 John Hopkins? Jamie is soon transferred to a larger hospital in the capital Santiago. Here, specialist burn doctors begin the process of preserving his damaged skin.
37:04 John Hopkins? They perform extensive grafts, taking healthy skin from elsewhere on his body and transplanting it to the burned areas. The procedure is complex, drawn out, and agonizing.
37:17 John Hopkins? Afterwards, Jamie spends two months recovering in the burns unit.
37:23 Speaker 02 That was a long and difficult time, you know, a lot of very sleepless nights and feeling incredibly hot. I was fevered for that time, basically the whole time I was running a temperature. My family had come and sit in the room with down jackets on and things and I was just naked, feeling so hot. So my body was working so hard to survive and to fight the infections that I was dealing with.
37:51 John Hopkins? Slowly but surely, Jamie makes positive strides towards recovery. The skin grafts take successfully. The antibiotics help stave off infection, his vital signs steady, and his organs begin to function without support.
38:08 John Hopkins? For all the countless hours that Jamie has spent in hospital, it was the steps taken in the minutes after the accident that made all the difference. His quick thinking to get down off the cliff and into the water, his ability to run through the pain and reach the boat. Every second counting towards his survival.
38:29 Speaker 02 Later on, talking to experts and things in this field, it's like I actually didn't have much time to get to hospital and that the actions that we all took, how I got out of there quickly, were pretty important. Apparently, I would have only had hours.
38:48 John Hopkins? After two grueling months spent recovering in hospital, Jamie at last flies home to New Zealand.
38:56 John Hopkins? There, he begins coming to terms with the longer lasting effects of his injuries.
39:03 Speaker 02 You really feel quite alone and you realise how difficult things are to do because you're starting to try and do more things like go to the toilet or open a door handle but, you know, I couldn't hold a knife to slice a piece of bread or cut a cucumber or anything. I couldn't open a bottle. Everything felt sharp and my hands were just so sensitive.
39:27 John Hopkins? Despite these ongoing physical challenges, Jamie works tirelessly to rebuild his strength and fitness. Within weeks of arriving back in New Zealand, he returns to the sport he excelled at as a teenager. Soon, he's entering himself into competitive mountain bike races and pushing himself harder than ever. He returns to the professional circuit and within three years, he achieves podium finishes in two international events. He also completes the Enduro World Series, the pinnacle of off-road endurance racing. All this in spite of the fact that scar tissue on his fingers makes it impossible to fully close his hands.
40:10 John Hopkins? It attributes his success in part to a state of mind he entered during those terrifying moments suspended ablaze in that ravine.
40:21 Speaker 02 You've been hyper-stimulated into this survival and there's part of that almost becomes then a natural state. It's also quite helpful for racing mountain bikes. It's incredible the energy that's in that space. At that point, the skin was so angry and red where there was swollen in your face and when you put the helmet on, put goggles on, you've got full-length clothing, you've got gloves. People don't stare at you anymore. You felt like everyone else and you were all in that mountain bike gear. No one could see that you looked different.
41:06 John Hopkins? About five years after his accident, the emotional strains begin to show. Jamie feels tired, irritable. Little things set him off.
41:17 John Hopkins? And so he does something that doesn't come naturally. He slows down. He goes to see a counselor, who helps him work through his various challenges.
41:27 John Hopkins? Turns out, he is likely suffering from adrenal fatigue, a symptom of chronic stress and a possible side effect of PTSD.
41:38 John Hopkins? Having a confirmed diagnosis is the first step of the next stage of his recovery journey, one that leads, hopefully, to a deeper kind of healing.
41:49 Speaker 02 My quest of finding myself in myself, rather than in that outside world that I'm not going to be made happy by what's around me in the physical world, that it's this journey inside. I think that was there before the accident, but it's the importance of that has just been reinforced so much more. And as the years have gone on, I think that's just slowly opened up into more and more understanding and knowledge of anything, from nature to our interconnectedness with the world and with people and all of that.
42:34 Speaker 02 It's so hard, eh, to even daydream about, would I want to not have had the accident? You know, and that's just what has happened. And so, I don't know. I don't know if you would not want it to happen, but it's also taken you somewhere and you've had a pretty amazing journey since then.
43:05 John Hopkins? Next time, while the production team take a short festive break, we'll delve into the Real Survival Stories archive. We meet marine-turned-yachtsman Pete Goss as he takes on the most draining and dangerous sailing event on Earth: a 24,000-mile, single-handed race around the globe. Most don't make it to the finish. Some don't survive. Two months in, hundreds of miles from land, he is beset by the worst storm he's ever faced. And then, a distress call comes in. A fellow racer is sinking and needs urgent help. Suddenly, Pete's battle to stay alive also becomes an epic Christmas-time rescue mission. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.
43:50 John Hopkins? Listen right now by joining Noiser Plus.
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44:21 John Hopkins? Hi, listeners. If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you'd like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] . That's [email protected] .
Previous Rescuers Stranded: Chopper Down in a Snowstorm Next Mayday on Christmas: Epic Ocean Rescue (Repeat) Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated