This was published 8 months ago
Quick-thinking Qld paramedics rescue man from mud with just seconds to spare
By Savannah Meacham
A spinal board, three life jackets, and lateral thinking. That’s what it took for two paramedics to save a Queensland man’s life after he was stuck in quick-sand-like mud with water rapidly rising.
The boater, in his 60s, fell out of his tinny into thick mud in Moreton Bay as the tide came in on Monday afternoon.
A Rescue 500 helicopter crew prepares to take the man to Gold Coast University Hospital.Credit: Queensland Ambulance Service
His friend on the tinny raised the alarm.
The man was in the mud for three hours, with the water above his shoulders by the time help arrived.
Paramedics Peter Carrie and Eden Venturato were at the scene – between Tabby Tabby and Eden islands – for all of 10 minutes and the tide had risen by 15 centimetres, so they knew they had to work fast.
With a spinal board stretcher, three life jackets, some rope and a MacGyver sense of problem-solving, the pair made a raft to extricate the man.
“We decided to take to the water, so we stripped down to the jocks and out we went,” Carrie told reporters on Tuesday.
“It was time-critical. We had to get in the water otherwise, worst-case scenario, he would have drowned.”
The pair were tethered to the Volunteer Marine Rescue boat with a rope and swam for 55 metres until they reached the mud.
“We were on our knees with the board between us and had to shuffle forward and pull it, shuffle forward and pull it until we got [to him],” Venturato said.
When they reached the man, Carrie joked, “You owe us a carton”, to which the patient responded, “I’ll buy you the whole liquor store!”
The pair managed to haul him out of the mud and onto the makeshift flotation device, before pulling him to safety with the help of the VMR crew.
By the time the man was a safe distance out of the mud, the water had completely inundated the area.
The Rescue 500 helicopter arrived a few minutes later and the man was flown to Gold Coast University Hospital, where he remains in a stable condition with leg injuries.
As for the paramedics, they were exhausted by the rescue but thankful that no bull sharks had “nipped at their toes”.
AAP