Members of the Šibenik station of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service (Hrvatska gorska služba spašavanja) extracted a man trapped between rocks in the Čikole River canyon near Drniš on Monday evening, HGSS reported. The operation concluded around 22.30, and the injured man was handed over to the emergency medical team.
The station received a call from the 112 centre regarding a missing person and a request for search assistance on 14 July at around 18.40. The search area was designated as the Čikole canyon below the Drniš tower, where, according to information available to HGSS, there were indications that the missing person might be located.
15 rescuers with two unmanned aerial vehicles deployed to the scene in a short time, and five firefighters from the Drniš Volunteer Fire Brigade also joined the operation. Due to the demanding and inaccessible terrain, the search was organised from multiple directions: part of the team scanned the area with drones from the air, another part rappelled down the steep cliffs using ropes, and others searched the dry riverbed.
In the early evening, a drone pilot spotted a person in a steep depression below the tower. The man was trapped upside down between the cliffs, and rescuers estimate he spent around ten hours in that position, in temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius.
Rescuers descended to him with stretchers and first-aid equipment, immobilising him, while the rest of the team set up a lifting system on higher ground. The injured man and the rescuers were quickly extracted from the canyon.
HGSS emphasised that the drone played a key role in the intervention, among other things by illuminating the dark and hard-to-reach canyon. "Such moments show the value of every training session, field exercise, and effort invested by rescuers. Everything came together at the right moment yesterday, and the result was a saved human life," HGSS stated.
