Chandigarh: The paraglider rescued by IAF from the remote mountaintops of Kullu’s Deo Tibba region in Himachal Pradesh is has turned out to be Hollywood cinematographer George Richmond — the visual mastermind behind blockbusters like ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, ‘Free Guy’, and the Elton John biopic, ‘Rocketman’.Severely injured in the crash, the 54-year-old underwent spinal surgery on Thursday at Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.The accident occurred on June 9 at an altitude of around 12,000 feet. Richmond was on a multi-day ‘bivouac flying’ adventure — a style of cross-country paragliding where pilots fly by day and camp in remote wilderness by night. Having taken off from the world-famous paragliding site at Bir Billing, he crashed on June 8 during a difficult take-off attempt from the base of Mt. Deo Tibba, at 19,688 feet the second tallest peak in the Pir Panjal Range.Fellow paragliders alerted Kullu administration, which informed the British embassy. A rescue operation was launched immediately. Two IAF helicopters flew in to evacuate Richmond.Within hours, he was flown to Bhuntar Airport and then shifted to Kullu Regional Hospital. After initial stabilization here, he was flown to the advanced trauma centre at PGI-Chandigarh (220km away) as a high-priority ‘red-alert’ emergency.A multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons, orthopaedic spine specialists, and cardiac anaesthetists was immediately mobilized. Led by Dr Vishal Kumar, a senior orthopaedic spine surgeon holding prestigious British fellowships (FRCS), the team performed an intricate, emergency surgery on June 11.“The entire newly aligned section of the neck was permanently anchored using a titanium plate secured with four medical screws to ensure absolute structural stability. Now we are confident of making him mobile in a few days,” said Dr Vishal.
