Teenager injured in beach rock fall

A teenager has been injured in a rock fall at Saltwick Bay, near Whitby.

HM Coastguard said rescue teams from Whitby and Ravenscar were called to the incident on Thursday afternoon.

The boy was helped by a member of the public who applied a bandage to a "severe upper leg injury" and kept him warm, according to a social media post form Whitby Coastguard.

He was then taken on the Whitby inshore lifeboat to the RNLI boathouse where he was transferred to an ambulance

The coastguard said teams on site had considered "the safest options for extraction" and given the nature of the injury and the terrain, a stretcher carry up the steep path, or a rope extraction, "would likely have caused significant pain and distress".

During the incident, a second rock fall occurred in the same area, and coastguard teams moved several families away from the base of the cliffs to a place of safety.

The team warned that cliffs along the coastline can be "incredibly unpredictable".

A spokesperson said rock falls can happen without warning and what looks stable "often isn't, particularly after periods of wet weather, followed by dry spells, frost, or ongoing erosion".

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