A 60-year-old tourist who survived a 120-foot plunge off a Montana cliff has spoken out from his hospital bed, saying he “shouldn’t be here.”
Ken Nurse, a Montana native now living in North Carolina, fell into a creek at Glacier National Park last Thursday while visiting McDonald Falls with his wife, Renae, and their family. He had been taking photographs of the waterfall but edged forward for a better view when the ground gave way beneath him, sending him tumbling down the cliff face and into the water below.
Bystander Josh Seppelt, a Navy electrician from Pierz, Minnesota, heard the fall and managed to bring Nurse to a shallower part of the creek. “The gentleman’s daughter said, ‘Dad, there’s somebody in the water.’ And the guy was able to pull Ken out by his foot and get into the shallows,” Renae told KTMF. She had been back in their car at the time of the accident and raced back when she realized something had happened.
“And he realized he wasn’t breathing, and he started CPR. And it just so happened there was a ranger that was real close by, and he was able to radio in for an extraction,” the injured man’s wife continued. The good Samaritan “told me he gave CPR. And that’s when I really panicked,” she said. “Because I’m a nurse by profession. So, I knew it was a really bad then.”
Nurse was airlifted to a local hospital by a search and rescue team and placed on a ventilator for two days. He suffered several cracked ribs, a compound elbow fracture and fluid in his lungs. He was moved out of intensive care on Sunday, though he still faces additional surgery.
“I’m doing pretty good considering,” Nurse told KTMF from his hospital bed. “It’s just one step at a time, but I shouldn’t be here and I’m going to do whatever I can to deserve this.”
His wife has managed to find some dark humor in the near-disaster now that she knows her husband will survive. She said she loves the area because “it is so peaceful and it is so beautiful and it just takes your breath away every time. Here, it actually took my husband’s breath this time but they gave it back.”
Renae singled out Seppelt’s heroism, saying he “courageously jumped in and saved Ken’s life,” She added, “I am beyond grateful that he [Ken] will be flying home with me tomorrow. I can’t imagine doing this life without him.”
In the viral moment that drew national attention, a family vacation to one of America’s most scenic national parks turned into a life-or-death emergency when a husband and father stepped too close to a waterfall overlook. The ground collapsed beneath him, sending him plummeting the equivalent of a 12-story building into frigid creek waters. A stranger’s quick thinking and CPR training, combined with the proximity of park rangers, created a chain of survival that doctors and family members alike have called miraculous.
Nurse and his wife were expected to fly home to North Carolina together.