A young man's life was saved Monday afternoon when vacationing heroes pulled an unconscious swimmer out of the water at Lynn Canyon and performed CPR.
After spotting a 24-year-old struggling in the swirling waters off Twin Falls, the tourists – including a medical student from Texas and a lifeguard from Chicago – dragged him out of the water and onto the shore.
After seeing the young man wasn't breathing and didn't have a pulse, one of the Good Samaritans performed CPR for about two minutes until the swimmer's lungs were clear, said District of North Vancouver assistant fire chief Jeremy Duncan.
The swimmer was conscious when district firefighters, park rangers and paramedics arrived at Twin Falls around 4 p.m. Fire crews performed a technical rope rescue to pull the swimmer to the top of the cliff before loading him into the ambulance.
The swimmer looked disoriented but the young man sat up in the ambulance and seemed OK, according to Hunter.
"His life was saved," the assistant fire chief said. "It's a miraculous call."
The incident is a reminder of the value of CPR and first-aid courses, Hunter added.
"No one ever plans for these types of events to happen," he said. "Luckily, they happened at the right time and the right place with the right people around."
Speaking to News 1130, Texas medical student Brian Laverentz marvelled at their good fortune.
"I just thought it was also serendipitous that we had a lifeguard father, a competitive swimmer daughter who also knew CPR, me [with] about 10 years of emergency medicine experience, [and] my wife who has lived around people in the medical field forever," he said.
"I don't know if he could have had any better luck as far as having a team of strangers."
This article originally appeared here.
