Rescuers are scrambling to find a British teenager who vanished eight days ago near Dracula’s Castle in Romania after calling for help.
George Smyth, 18, went for a hike towards the village of Bran, home to Dracula’s rumoured home, in rural Romania.
After reaching the Tiganesti Valley, a dense portion of forest in the snowy mountains, he used his last bit of signal to call emergency services and say he was suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia.
The British teenager hasn’t been heard from since.
His mother, Jo Smyth, flew to Romania after the alert was issued for her son on Friday night.
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She said: ‘He left his university in the United Kingdom on Sunday without telling us, to go hiking alone.
‘His phone last had signal in a remote mountain area. I flew to Romania immediately, and we are trying to support the search teams as best we can.’
Authorities have shared a photograph of George and said he’s wearing the jacket in the picture. Anyone with information has been urged to contact authorities.
Daily search operations have been repeatedly hampered by dangerous weather and heavy snow conditions.
On Sunday evening, when the teenager asked for help, an overnight search was conducted, continuing until morning without success.
Searches resumed in the following days, with crews scouring the mountain terrain on foot and using all available equipment.
Rescuers later found a rucksack with equipment in the area he had called from, but no trace of George has been found.
November and early December routinely bring rapidly changing weather, sudden fog banks, freezing winds and unstable snowpacks, and hypothermia can set in within minutes if a hiker is unprotected or exhausted.
What is hypothermia?
Hypothermia is a dangerous drop in body temperature below 35C and symptoms include shivering, pale, cold and dry skin and slow breathing.
If someone is suffering from hypothermia, they should be brought indoors, have cold and wet clothing removed, and given a warm drink.
Poiana Brasov and Bran, George’s planned start and end points, are connected by long, forested trails that rise sharply into high alpine sections, which become particularly perilous during cold snaps.
Rescuers stressed that despite their continuous efforts since Sunday and the use of all available technology, no additional clues have been found that could lead them to George’s whereabouts.
In a first for local rescue operations, Salvamont Brasov even deployed a Black Hawk helicopter to fly intervention teams quickly to the most inaccessible parts of the massif.
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