Victoria-area firefighters use Ivory inventiveness to slide boy to safety

VIEW ROYAL, B.C. – A Vancouver Island youngster’s effort to retrieve a dropped iPod left him between a rock and a hard place, but firefighters quickly helped him make a clean getaway.

The incident happened Wednesday afternoon when View Royal Fire Chief Paul Hurst says the seven- or eight-year-old boy dropped his iPod on a suburban Victoria beach and became wedged between two boulders as he tried to pick it up.

Hurst says by the time firefighters arrived the panicked child was dangling by his shoulders and head, with the rest of his body between the rocks, and the tide was rising.

Rescuers needed a slick answer and Hurst says the solution was just that — a solution of soap.

He says a thin, hard piece of plastic, similar to a crazy carpet, was slipped behind the boy and nearly 20 litres of liquid soap was poured over the youngster, who was then pulled, unscathed, from between the boulders.

No word on the condition of the iPod. (CFAX)