23/03/2019
Become a dive professional. Your skills might get useful in non-diving situations as well!
Diving saves lives!
Few days ago we received this message from our former student, who completed her divemaster and assistant instructor courses with us. We could not be more proud!
“It is time to say thank you! I did My DM and Assistant instructor courses on Koh Tao in 2013-14. After that I decided to give the university life ago and ended up studying in Malmö, Sweden. Since my studies have kept me busy I have not been diving as much as I used to, but I have been thinking about how useful the dive training I have is in everyday life. On last Friday I really had to put my skills to good use.
I was on my way to the railway station in Malmö to catch a train to Copenhagen. Malmo if full of beautiful canals. While I was walking next to one of them I noticed two people in the water.
What was great in the situation was to notice, that when the emergency skills were needed I went on autopilot. I was the first one to arrive on site and called to 911 (luckily there was a Swedish lady arriving on site and I could hand over the phone, since I had hard time to understand the accent of the emergency dispatcher). After that I tried to figure out, if both of the people in the water needed help and how to move forward with the situation. One of them had tried to drown himself and the other person went after him. The fact that I have had practiced similar situations over and over again with my fellow trainees made the situation somehow familiar. Just get the person out from the water and check the breathing and continue from there.
On the other hand it was horrible to be all by your self dragging the victim to the shore. At the beginning the other person was trying to help, but I told him away pretty much at the start, since he was in shock and close to hypothermia. There were plenty of people filming the situation, but no one came to my aid.
Right before the paramedics arrived some people came down to the waters edge. That made controlling the situation harder since everyone wanted to know what happened. The woman who was talking to emergency dispatcher started to hesitate because she could not tell my phone number to the operator. That led to full panic and all the sudden she needed to leave to pick up the kids from daycare. All this caused disturbance and I lost my focus to the victim for about 40 seconds. During those seconds the victim had had arrhythmia and had stopped breathing.
I started the call to 911 twelve past noon and the fire department was on site seventeen past. They dragged the victim up to the road where the paramedics started his heart with AED.I heard the victim screaming when he came back to life.
The firemen came to check how I was doing, and a rescue diver stayed with me when I gave my testimony to the police. I have a friend working at the fire department and he told me after, that no one wants to take a gig to the canals since it is very rare that the victims are found alive. This time was different and the victim was carried to the ambulance eyes wide open.
I can be 100% certain that I could not have acted the way I did without my training at KTD. Diving really helps save lives! On the first night after what happened I could not really sleep while going through what has happened but I am sure I would sleep a lot worse, if I wasn’t able to do anything and the firemen had lifted a drowned person from the canal. Thank you for the good training!"
One more good reason to continue your dive training. It does not only prepare you to situations happening when diving. It prepares you for life!
