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Teenage girl swept away by river | Teenage girl swept away by river |
(about 6 hours later) | |
A teenage girl is in a serious condition in hospital after being swept away by a river on Dartmoor, Devon. | A teenage girl is in a serious condition in hospital after being swept away by a river on Dartmoor, Devon. |
The girl, whose friends raised the alarm by mobile phone after losing sight of her at Walla Brook near Watern Tor, was in a party of 10 young people. | |
Police said the teenagers were among 85 groups of pupils training for the annual Ten Tors Expedition event. | |
In a separate incident, a man and a woman were killed when they were washed off a Cornwall harbour wall. | |
The couple were walking along the pier at Mullion Cove when a wave washed them into the sea in gale force winds. | |
An RNLI lifeboat and Royal Navy rescue helicopter were dispatched to recover them, but the pair were pronounced dead at Treliske hospital. | |
Major operation | |
In the incident on Dartmoor, two other teams of young people also had to be rescued, a number of whom were suffering from hypothermia, police said. | |
Another teenager suffered leg injuries. | |
Supt Barry Marsden said it had been a major operation to rescue the teenagers from the moor in deteriorating weather. | |
The police, Dartmoor rescue services and the Royal Naval Air Service were involved, he said. | |
The alarm was raised by the first group at about 1405 GMT on Sunday. | |
The girl who had fallen in the river was located within about 20 minutes by a rescue helicopter and airlifted to Derriford hospital, where she was resuscitated but is described as "very poorly". | |
The subsequent two groups were also rescued by helicopter - members from all three teams were taken to Okehampton Battle Camp for checks, then driven by ambulance to hospital. | |
Swollen rivers | |
Duty Inspector Julie Challoner said: "The Ten Tors is something they do every year, go up and down 10 big groups of rock called tors." | |
"It's a really big tradition in Devon across Dartmoor." | |
It was not known if any teachers or trainers were with the children at the time. | |
Weather conditions in the area were poor, with heavy rain over a 12-hour period that had swollen rivers. | |
The helicopter scrambled to rescue the teenager was the same one which later recovered the bodies of the man and woman from the sea at Mullion Cove. | |
In that incident, the alarm was raised to coastguards shortly after 1700 GMT. |
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