Fireman in dramatic river rescue

A firefighter who jumped from a bridge into the river Shannon to save a woman from drowning has praised others involved in the dramatic river rescue.

Firefighter Eli Brace – who is one of about 50 members of Limerick City Fire and Rescue Service specifically trained to perform river rescues – jumped off Sarsfield Bridge in Limerick city as the woman was being swept under the water's surface.

'Part of training'
"I just jumped at the bridge and that's the bit that everybody seems to be focusing on," said Mr Brace.

“It is part of our training. In here, rescues are not a big deal. Okay, it’s a big deal if the girl is okay and she is fine, and we’re delighted with that. But everybody in here does this stuff week in, week out. You come back yesterday and it was, ‘well done Eli’, and that’s it.”

Praising his colleagues, he added: “There are lads in here that go into fires every day and they go into the river every day and they never get any thanks for it. So, it’s good that we are getting this highlighted, because it does no harm to the fire service and puts it out there, the stuff that we do. We are going the whole time.

“We had come from an apartment fire and straight into that [river rescue] and this morning we have just come from a RTA [Road Traffic Accident] and we are taking little kids out of a car. It’s busy, but it’s very rewarding, there’s no other job like it. There is great guys and girls working here.”

The married father of two from Ennis, Co Clare described how he and three other water- trained rescue fire officers were part of an emergency response to the potentially deadly situation on Saturday evening.

'Only in the door'
"We were just after coming back from an apartment fire, so we were only in the door two minutes, and normally [in emergency alerts] an alarm will go off here [in the fire station] and we'll get a print out telling us what the emergency is. But with a river rescue, it comes over the tannoy system, saying 'River Rescue'. With the river rescue there is a greater sense of urgency and time is of the essence."

Mr Brace (36), who spent 11 years in the Army before switching to the fire service six years ago, explained how most of the 60 or so members of the Limerick fire service are qualified as Swift Water Rescue Technicians (SRTs) so they can respond within seconds to river rescue situations.

Special suits
SRTs wear special suits which give them more support to deal with water rescues:

“They keep us floating in the water and they are highly visible, so if something goes wrong, we can be seen. They also give us the ability to support someone in the water. If we do get to somebody we don’t have to try and tread the water – we can just lie back and they can lie across our chests and it’s a matter of the rest of the guys getting to us.”

The Shannon-based Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter 115 was on hand to help out in the river rescue but, despite dispatching a winchman, he could not reach the woman. Mr Brace then had to make a split-second decision to jump from the bridge.

“We arrived onto Sarsfield Bridge and the helicopter was over her and they were making an attempt to get her up and down from the water, but I think that, between the wind and their rotor blades and the current, he [the winchman] couldn’t get to her,” he said.