Michaela tells of Nepal air crash rescue

9:44pm Monday 13th October 2008

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A Bradford medical student is ecstatic to be back home with her family after she helped save the life of a pilot in an horrific plane crash in Nepal.

Speaking to the Telegraph & Argus on her return, Michaela Barker said her involvement in the aftermath of the drama at Luka Airport “still doesn’t seem real”.

Miss Barker, 23, of Kings Road, Bolton, was waiting for a flight at the airport, near Mount Everest, on Wednesday morning, when a small aircraft crashed on the runway killing 16 passengers and two crew members.

She said: “All of a sudden the Nepalese people started waving their hands in the air and all they could see was smoke. For a start the airport officials told us to do nothing but I couldn’t stand it anymore so I grabbed my first aid kit. I was walking down the runway towards the wreckage and the local people were bringing up the pilot. They said they needed to get help for him.

“I said: ‘I am a medical student, what can I do?’ The English-speaking woman said ‘stabilise him’ and then she ran off back to the plane.”

She said the pilot had a major cut across his forehead and one of the cockpit control levers was still stuck in his smashed-up nose.

Miss Barker, a Leeds medical student who was trained in trauma treatment at Bradford Royal Infirmary, said she could find no peripheral pulse and the pilot looked like he was going into shock.

Once back inside the airport, Miss Barker was joined by several medics and together they were able to give the pilot fluid and eventually managed to stabilise him.

She said: “We ripped up the counter in the airport to use as a makeshift stretcher and carry him out to the helicopter which got him out of there to the hospital.

“I’m glad I did it but I still can’t believe what happened. It doesn’t seem real.”

Miss Barker said she was delighted to hear that the pilot was now in a stable condition but said she was devastated when she found out that everyone else on the plane had burned to death.

Miss Barker, who had been on a medical placement in Nepal and had also been trekking to Everest, is now relaxing at home with her proud parents, Terry and Jacqui. and her brother and two sisters.