Why these two firemen dived back into a city fountain to rescue a boy

It was a warm night in January 1981 when a 12-year-old boy, who had been wading in Melbourne’s City Square fountains, got sucked underwater and disappeared.

As the minutes ticked by, his chances of survival dwindled, and searchers expected to find a body.

Firefighter Garry Cronin was commended for saving Carl Powell.Credit: Chris Hopkins

The whole country seemed to hold its breath, waiting for a miracle. And incredibly, that is what transpired.

There was jubilation when, 90 minutes after Carl Powell was thought to have drowned, firefighters John Rodda and Garry Cronin found him alive, breathing in an underground air pocket.

In The Age’s front page story the next day, “Trapped boy saved under city fountain”, Carl’s mother, Kathleen Powell, declared her son’s rescue “a miracle”, while he was treated for shock in hospital.

“After waiting for 25 minutes, the ambulance men told me there was no hope,” she told The Age at the time.

“When the policeman shouted, ‘he’s alive’, I couldn’t believe it,” she said, wiping back tears of joy.

From hospital, Carl told journalists he fell through a broken grate while wading in the fountains in Melbourne’s Swanston Street. In the water below, he was tossed around, could feel suction and hear a pump.

He grabbed a pipe, and found a space where he could breathe. He said he’d been scared, and started praying and saying, “I don’t want to die”.

Forty-three years later, Cronin remembers at some point a supervisor had told him and Rodda to give up diving into the slimy, pitch-black water.

But something made them go back in. “We said, ‘We’ll give it one more go’,” Cronin recalls.

Cronin, now 80, is still a Melbourne firefighter but soon to retire, while Rodda, 83, is retired and lives in a town along the Murray River.

The men tell how, in 1981, they weren’t trained for water rescues, had no special clothing, and their oxygen masks weren’t waterproof, so they had to hold their breath while diving.

They were tied by rope to colleagues outside so they didn’t get lost in the drain.

Retired firefighter John Rodda at his home on the NSW-Victoria border. Credit: Jason Robins

Their fire torches would short circuit in the water, but in one of those intermittent beams, Rodda spotted Carl clinging to the pipe, and they popped their heads up in the air pocket beside him.

“He was beside himself,” Rodda said. “He wanted to see his mum. I tried to coax him into coming out, and he said, ‘No, I’m not gonna let go’.”

But they calmed him, and Cronin said Carl clung to his back as they crouch-walked through the tunnel.

It was pandemonium on the surface.

“Some people cheered and clapped,” Cronin said. “There was a big crowd watching.”

Cronin, who had cut his face on a pipe, had a tetanus shot in hospital. Then they went back to work.

The Age’s front page report from 1981.Credit: The Age

The pair received a Royal Humane Society bravery award and a commendation certificate for bravery from the Queen.

The men emphasise that they were among 20 firefighters rescuing Carl, and police and ambulance officers were also at the scene.

Rodda doesn’t know what became of Carl, but said “never a day goes by when I don’t think about the incident”.

“He was bloody lucky,” Rodda said. “He was lucky that he had two determined, pig-headed blokes who wouldn’t give in.”

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