CLEARWATER, Fla. (WFTS) — 12 minutes. That's what it took for a group of Clearwater Fire & Rescue members to respond and rescue a woman who had driven her car into a pond.
CFR responded to the call at On Top of the World 55+ Community Saturday morning. Lieutenant Ben McBride was a part of the team of responders.
"During en route, my driver Adam, my fire medic Stephanie, we talked about our roles and responsibility of what we're gonna do once we get on scene," Lt. McBride explained.
As McBride and the rest of the team involved in the rescue met for the interview with ABC Action News, they happened to meet the woman's son, Andrew Hurda. And Hurda got the chance to thank the men and women who worked to rescue his mother, Marsha.
According to Florida Highway Patrol, at 10:20 a.m. Nov. 12, calls came in about a car fully submerged in a pond. The report stated a 69-year-old Clearwater woman suffered a medical emergency, lost control of her car, then drove into a pond.
"The car is probably about 90 to 80% submerged with the rear window exposed," Lt. McBride said.
Lt. McBride and Fire Medic Stephanie Nuszkowski immediately jumped into action to rescue the woman.
"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 could see Hurda trying to escape through the back window. But once they were able to break it, 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.
That's when Lt. Wade Bishop stepped in. Lt. Bishop has been a diver for CFR for 13 years. He's the one who pulled her 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," he said.
Even after the grab, Hurda was in cardiac arrest. Onsite medics worked to get a pulse back.
"Unfortunately, a lot of these don't go positively. It's not an easy thing to go under the water and find somebody and get them out and then do it in enough time to save their lives. Minutes mean a lot. So it really makes you feel good. Really makes all the hard work that all of us do every day and with the training and the repetition really makes it worthwhile. These types of outcomes really make it work," said Lt. Bishop.
The team said within that 12 minutes, it took about three to get there, six minutes underwater, and another three to get a pulse.
"We actually had the perfect storm of having the appropriate and most trained people on the on the scene," said. Lt. McBride.
Days later, bandages remind them of their heroic efforts.
"I think we had four or five firefighters sustained, you know, random cuts and things of that nature. So during the middle of it, you don't really realize it. The adrenaline's pumping. You have someone trapped, you're trying to make a rescue. The fact that a patient was still conscious and able to make attempts to get out herself kind of made it more of a super, you know, adrenaline dump. And when you come out, you don't realize that you're bleeding and things like that," said Lt. McBride.
Hurda told ABC Action News his mother is currently in a coma but is expected to survive.
This is the second time a car has gone into the exact same pond, launching a search and rescue mission.
