Wall of home knocked down to get morbidly obese teenager to hospital - 8 hours and 40 EMS staff

[Sweet Zombie Jesus]

Wall of home knocked down to get morbidly obese teenager to hospital.
Georgia Davis, 19, extricated after eight-hour operation involving
more than 40 emergency staff and builders


guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 May 2012 16.04 BST

Scaffolding was used to help remove Georgia Davis, who had become ill,
from the house in Aberdare, south Wales. More than 40 emergency staff
and builders knocked down a wall to remove a morbidly obese young
women from her home after she became ill and could not be taken for
treatment any other way.

Fire crews, doctors and paramedics were assisted by council officials
and scaffolders in the eight-hour operation to extricate Georgia
Davis, 19, from her home in Aberdare, south Wales. Windows and part of
a wall were reportedly removed from the terraced house before Davis
was winched down in a special stretcher via scaffolding, with the
scene screened off.

The teenager achieved tabloid notoriety in 2008 when, aged 15, she
weighed 209kg (33 stone). She was featured on page one of the Sun as
"Britain's fattest teen" and portrayed as an exemplar of a society in
which significant obesity, particularly among the young, has become
endemic.

After encouragement from her GP Davis was offered free treatment at a
US weight-loss camp. Over nine months she reportedly lost 95kg (15
stone), but subsequently regained the weight after returning to Wales.
According to reports she currently weighs around 380kg (60 stone).

Shortly before she fell ill Davis reportedly told Facebook friends
that she was not able to get out of her bed. She wrote: "I'm in bed
but problem is can't get up." The alarm was raised on Wednesday
lunchtime.

A former schoolfriend told the South Wales Echo that while Davis was
seen out regularly after her return from the US she had not been
spotted in public for some months, and was believed to have been
confined to her house.

A spokesman for the Welsh ambulance service said Davis, who was
conscious throughout the removal operation, had been taken to hospital
using an ambulance equipped with wider lifting equipment and other
aids.

A joint statement released by the ambulance and fire services and the
local health authorities said they were called to the home on
Wednesday lunchtime and decided the patient, whom they did not name,
needed to be removed.

They returned on Thursday morning with a team of fire service experts
and staff from a scaffolding company to remove the woman. The
statement added: "This has facilitated some significant works to the
house." The South Wales Echo reported that internal walls were also
removed for Davis to be carried through the house before she was
removed.

Davis, who remains in hospital, has spoken at length in the past about
her weight, saying she believes her chronic overeating began when her
father died from emphysema when she was five. She has likened her
compulsion to eat to heroin addiction.

In February last year she told the Daily Mail that aged 10 she was
placed on the social services "at risk" register because of her
weight, which had by then reached 76kg (12 stone).

"When he died, food became a sort of comfort for me," Davis said of
her father. "When I was eating I felt less unhappy. I suppose I was
filling a physical and emotional hole, although I was too young to
understand that at the time."

One neighbour said it was known locally that Davis had become
increasingly obese since her return from the US. They said: "When she
first came back from America you would see her walking up to the
country park most days. She was going to the gym and doing really
well, but then you just stopped seeing her. We haven't seen her since,
not for months."