Shock While Fixing Aerial

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30553, 23 September 1964, Page 18

Shock While Fixing Aerial

(New Zealand Press Association; AUCKLAND, September 22. St. John Ambulance officers clambered onto the steep and slippery roof of a two-storey house in Home street, Grey Lynn, tonight to rescue a man who collapsed after suffering an electric shock •while he was fixing a television aerial.

The man, Malcolm Ross, of 1 Home street, was lowered to the ground in a Neil Robertson stretcher, and was taken to Auckland Hospital with a deep burn on his arm and suffering from shock.

The ambulance was called to the house at 7.45 p.m. after the occupants heard a thump on the roof. While the. ambulance was on its way one of the people living in the house scrambled on to the roof and gave Mr Ross artificial resuscitation. Station Officer G. Jackson, with his assistant, Mr B Laing, climbed a fire escape to a point underneath the guttering and swung from a projecting pipe on to the steep roof. The iron roof had been made treacherous by rain which had fallen earlier in the evening. The two men had to roll Mr Ross into the stretcher, in constant danger of slipping to the ground. They hung the rope around a vent pipe and lowered him to the ground. They then swung back to safety.

The ambulance was called to the house, which is in flats, after the 35-year-old manager, Mr D. G. Smith, who was helping Mr Ross to adjust the aerial, heard him fall on the roof. Mr Smith said afterwards: “We were in the flat watching television and the pickup was poor. So Merv grabbed some pliers and went up on the roof in his bare feet.

“He said, ‘When I turn the aerial yell when it’s right.’ “The screen improved and we yelled and that’s when we heard him crash on to the tin roof.

“I climbed up and saw him stretched out. He had no heartbeat and was frothing at the mouth. “I yelled for the others below to get an ambulance while I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I did it for about 15 minutes, and when the ambulance men arrived they checked and found his heart was beating.”