Hurt climber may lose her foot, ankle

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. – A Sumner, Wash., woman may lose her left foot and ankle after she was pinned for about an hour under a large rock that fell from an established climbing wall in Tumwater Canyon.

The father of the woman, Andrea Haisch, 21, said the impact also broke her forearm and pelvis. He said doctors have told him his daughter has a 50 percent chance of losing her foot.

The woman’s brother, Kurt D. Haisch, was on the climbing wall when the rock came loose, and he fell 15 to 20 feet. Kurt, 24, a paramedic with Ballard Ambulance in Wenatchee, suffered two broken cervical vertebra and a broken tailbone.

The siblings’ father, Dan Haisch, of Sumner, said the fall “did not sever his spinal cord; it was millimeters from that type of injury.”

Andrea Haisch was watching her brother climb when the rock fell on top of her, her father said.

“They’re both lucky to be alive,” Dan Haisch said in a phone interview from Harborview Medical Center, where his children were both in satisfactory condition.