Ballinagh native saves man from drowning

A remote destination known as Little Beach in Australia became the location of a brave water rescue operation spearheaded by a Cavan man and his girlfriend last weekend.

A Sunday afternoon retreat to one of Australia’s south western beaches was on the agenda for Ballinagh software engineer, Tomás McPhillips, and his girlfriend Clare Smith from Dublin.

They were just leaving the sands at around mid-afternoon when Clare noticed “something in the water.”

“We saw that it was a man floating face down,” Tomás recalls. “We reacted pretty quickly; we noticed that he wasn’t responding to the waves coming across him,” he said, adding that they both “bolted” into the water.

The man, floating in water that was waist to chest deep, was unresponsive when they reached him. Upon flipping him over, Tomás noticed that he was “very blue”.

“It was clear that he was knocked out,” he recalled.

Together, they pulled the stricken man to shore where his family rushed to be by his side. They began performing CPR for around four minutes and put him in the recovery position when the man then managed to take a breath himself.

“From there we knew that he was alive and that he was going to be able to make a recovery.”

Aged in his 60s, the man was conscious but “incoherent”, having swallowed “a lot” of salt water. By the time emergency services came, the man was able to answer a few questions, and remembered a wave hitting him in the back causing him to lose consciousness.

“These things can happen very quickly,” Tomás said, adding that the family were “very thankful” to the couple.

“It was scary, there was definitely the initial shock that maybe this man had had a heart attack and unfortunately wasn’t alive.”

The emergency services later contacted Clare to say the man stayed in the hospital overnight, but was now in “stable” condition.

“The first aid we gave him at the time, and managing to pull him out definitely saved his life,” the Irish couple were told.

“It was a great relief, a huge relief, massive,” admits Tomás.

The proud Cavanman highly recommends first aid training to anyone. “We both have done a series of first aid training courses and, when we got there and pulled him into shore, the training really kicked in.

“You never think you’re going to need to use your first aid training but then, when you do, you realise how incredibly valuable it is.”