Fire crews hose Oliver’s crashed plane from park tree

Firefighters “jetted” in to the rescue after a teenager’s model plane crash landed in trees.
 
Fourteen-year-old Oliver Gallimore was devastated when his £250 Chris Foss Acro Wot remote control aircraft got stuck 60ft up an oak tree in Ridgmont Park, Horwich, on Sunday afternoon. But crews from Horwich Fire Station saved the day by “hosing down” the aircraft the following day.

Grateful Oliver, of Dunchurch Close, Lostock, will now donate his £20 weekly wage from his newspaper round to The Fire Fighters Charity as a thank-you for getting his aircraft back. Oliver, in Year Nine at Rivington and Blackrod High School, was flying the hi-tech plane, which was a birthday gift just a few weeks ago, in front of his watching grandmother, Pam Oliver, when it crashed into the tree canopy.

He said: “I thought I wouldn’t get it back at all. I have lost one in a tree before but the other one wasn’t expensive. I had only flown it about five times when it got stuck. I was worried it would fall down overnight. I went to check before school and it was holding on by a branch.

“I have liked model aircrafts for five or six years. The water from the hose ruined the electronics of the plane. They will cost about £100 to replace but I hope to be flying it again after Christmas.”

Oliver’s mum, Lynda Gallimore, a community life champion at Asda Middlebrook, said: “It was Oliver’s nanny’s birthday and she was nearly climbing the tree to get it down. What the firefighters did was so charitable. My concern was if there was heavy winds it would be blown down into the road. I know they occasionally rescue cats from trees but I told Oliver there was no way they would come out for a remote control plane.”

Crew manager at Horwich, Jason Martin, said: “It was an unusual request but the young lad was upset. We had a quick look. We could reach it with our hoses and it came loose within a couple of minutes.

“We have rescued horses in the past — but not model airplanes.”

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