- ‘The fangs went right through my boot,’ producer Steve Rankin says
- Image of Rankin’s foot went viral after it was posted on Twitter
- It shows the foot’s flesh stripped away to the producer’s bare bones
- Injured Mr Rankin has undergone surgery and now says he is ‘resting’
- We haven’t published photo but it can be viewed by clicking link below
By Steve Nolan and Mark Duell
Published: | Updated:
The producer working for TV adventurer Bear Grylls has spoken for the first time about the terrifying moment when one of the deadliest snakes in the world bit his foot.
Steve Rankin, who has worked with Grylls as a producer on Man vs Wild, was in Costa Rica scouting locations for the upcoming Discovery show Naked and Afraid when the reptile attacked.
‘As I was traversing through some deep jungle, I was bitten on the foot by a Fer-de-Lance.
‘It was under a fallen tree as I climbed over. Fer de Lance known to be aggressive and it just zapped me in the foot through my boot.
‘It’s one of the deadliest snakes in the world and the fangs went right through my boot,’ Rankin recalled.
The producer was rushed to two-miles on a makeshift stretchers by his fellow crew members and then airlifted to a hospital in San Jose.
But despite treatment of antibiotics and antivenom medications, the wound grew infected.
‘About 5 days later the flesh in my foot had started to rot,’ Rankin told TMZ.
Medical crew in Costa Rica had to remove a large piece of skin and Rankin was then rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles where he received skin grafts.
He is now making a remarkable recovery.
‘Getting better slowly but surely. Gonna be a long slow recovery though. Thanks everyone for your good wishes. Skin graft came from my thigh so half of my quad is on my foot the other half is on my leg!,’ he posted on Twitter.
He added that the quick actions of his crew to get him to doctors likely saved his life.
News of Rankin’s gruesome injury spread after the shocking picture of it – which was taken three weeks ago and showed the flesh on Mr Rankin’s foot stripped away to the bone and tendons – went viral after it posted online by Grylls.
He has since tweeted a post-operation picture showing the foot following a skin graft, held together with surgical staples.
He also posted an image taken six days after the snake attack which shows the effects of the venom eating away at his flesh.
Accompanying that picture, he wrote: ‘WARNING. Here’s one for the gore fans.
‘The flesh has just started to necrotise and ooze a bit.’ It appears alongside a link to the picture.
The original picture by Bear has since gone viral and received many horrified reactions from some of the adventurer’s 1million followers.
The intrepid explorer didn’t elaborate on the injury, where filming was taking place when the snake attacked or what type of snake caused the damage to Mr Rankin’s foot.
But Mr Rankin later said the snake bit him while he was climbing over a fallen tree while filming for a forthcoming series called Naked And Afraid in California.
He was looked after by his team for two hours in the wild before a helicopter took him to a hospital in San Jose, California. He said they saved his life.
Former SAS soldier Grylls became a global star after eating insects and drinking his own urine to survive in the wild.
His most recent show, Get Out Alive will air in the US this summer and sees 20 ordinary people set a range of tough challenges with a £500,000 prize at stake.
He recently signed a deal with Discovery enabling him to work with terrestrial broadcasters in the UK for the first time.
And that deal is said to have sparked something of a bidding war between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to win the rights to Get Out Alive.
Grylls, who is also the UK’s Chief Scout, is expected to begin filming on another new show called Ultimate Survivor.
- Click on this external link for the photo (WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT)
- You can also click here for a photo of the foot post-surgery (SAME WARNING APPLIES)
