Peter de Vries is an arborist who lives in Sarnia, Ont. working with trees. An important part of his job involves extracting people from those trees in the case of a major mishap, a skill he displayed at Windsor Park in Dorval Saturday morning.
“Most fire departments and paramedics aren’t trained to get someone out of a tree,” he pointed out.
De Vries spoke after scaling a tree several storeys high to extract an “unconscious” dummy victim as part of a contest, just missing the seven-minute time limit.
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The City of Dorval was also giving free trees to residents attending the festival.
“But if you have the space I recommend doing so.”
Organizer Meagan Hanna stressed safety when caring for trees. Many people get injured trying to maintain trees without proper training or taking precautions.