Clearwater Firefighters Save Woman From Sinking Car
To them, it was just another day of going above and beyond. Clearwater firefighters saved a woman from a car that was submerged in a pond.
Clearwater Fire & Rescue (CFR) responded to a call at the 55+ community On Top of the World. A 69-year-old woman suffered a medical emergency, lost control of her car, then drove into a pond. According to the callers, the victim’s car was fully submerged. While en route to the scene, the responding CFR team, led by Lieutenant Ben McBride, planned out the situation.
The CFR team arrived on site and saw the reality of the situation. “The car is probably about 90 to 80% submerged with the rear window exposed,” Lt. McBride said.
Lt. McBride and Fire Medic Stephanie Nuszkowski jumped in the pond and into action. “We got in, we broke the window, the passenger window first and then the rear window when we found out she was in there. So it wasn’t much thinking. We just went for it,” Nuskowski said. The two firefighters saw the victim, identified as Marsha Hurda, trying to escape through the car’s rear window. The problem was that once they broke the rear window, the car started to sink faster, falling 8 to 10 feet down. “Unfortunately, due to some of the debris in the way the vehicle was sinking in nature, the patient kind of floated up and everything was kind of getting turbulent. We were unable to pull her out right away. At that time, she experienced a medical emergency and then the option was to do a dive for that,” Lt. McBride recalled.
Remember, these firefighters operate as a team. Seeing the car slipping deeper into the pond, Lt. Wade Bishop stepped in. Lt. Bishop has been a diver for CFR for 13 years. He’s the one who pulled Hurda from the water. “Something like this doesn’t happen because of one person. I may be the guy that made the grab, but it was a whole team collaborative effort to really be successful,” said Bishop.
However, the rescue wasn’t over because Hurda was in cardiac arrest. The CFR medics who were on shore went to work to get her pulse back. They got her pulse back. Hurda is in a coma, but is expected to survive.
The entire rescue happened in the span of 12 minutes. Three minutes to get to the scene, six minutes underwater, and another three to get a pulse.
Here’s a pic of the scene:
On Saturday, multiple personnel jumped into action after a car drove into a pond, trapping the female driver inside. They were able to break multiple windows and free her, bringing her to shore to treat her. She was whisked off to the hospital within 12 minutes of their arrival. pic.twitter.com/SBugq6TYwv
— Clearwater Fire & Rescue Department (@clearwaterfire) November 14, 2022
This is the second time that a car has been submerged in this Clearwater pond!
And here are the CFR heroes:
https://twitter.com/clearwaterfire/status/1592584003105992705
“We actually had the perfect storm of having the appropriate and most trained people on the on the scene,” said. Lt. McBride. [SOURCE ABC Action News]
