Episode 4 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call - a moment of danger when life can hang in the balance.

A split second where the outcome could go either way.

I was rooted to the spot with fear.

The difference between disaster...

-and survival.

-Our hearts dropped. This was a big crash.

These are the people that have been there, and lived to tell the tale.

-I need an ambulance.

-15 minutes and your number would be up.

Their instincts and resources, coupled with the quick thinking

of others, helped to pull them through...

Could have gone the wrong way. Could easily gone the wrong way.

..and their dramatic experiences were recorded on camera.

There were several things that could have killed me,

should have killed me, and didn't.

It's a day they'll never forget, the day they had a close call.

Today on Close Calls...

A battle against the clock to pluck a barely conscious yachtsman

from the sea, after he falls from an isolated mooring.

There was only one person, and he was struggling to hold him.

He'd been holding him for...ten minutes.

A wife's call for help as she fights to stop her husband

bleeding to death, following a freak accident with a circular saw...

-He really was going.

-It was definitely time-critical.

Richard had lost a significant amount of blood.

And a fire crew urge a terrified driver,

who can't swim, to let go of the roof of his sinking car.

You need to do this to save yourself.

You need to grab hold of that ladder.

Conwy, North Wales.

A lifeboat crew's body camera captures the urgent search

for a pensioner who's fallen into the sea on a freezing January day.

OK, OK. I'll jump on, I'll jump on.

It's been ten minutes since David Stocks

fell into the water from a pontoon, where his boat is moored.

He's clinging on but he's beginning to lose consciousness.

I did contemplate what would happen if you did just close your eyes

and just let go.

But David needs to stay alert if he's going to stay alive.

70-year-old David Stocks moved to Llandudno,

on the coast of North Wales, from his Yorkshire home 40 years ago.

He and his partner Susan Kelly spend as much time as they can

on their 26-foot yacht, Chiron, in nearby Conwy.

It was something we'd always talked about.

We'd have a boat on the river, go down, make a pot of tea,

sit out there in the sunshine and watch the world go by.

Just being out with nature.

The wind going through your hair and the quiet, I think,

more than anything.

It's a cold and windy January afternoon in Conwy

and David is heading out to the boat to collect some tools.

He needs to take a water taxi from the harbour to a pontoon

that's way out in the middle of the river,

where his yacht is moored. It's a journey he's made many times

but this trip turns out to be anything but routine.

As I stepped off the boat onto the pontoon,

I turned round to pick the rope up,

just to tie the boat to the side, and as I turned round,

I realised that the wind had blown the boat out

and there was nothing there for me to reach out to.

David desperately tries to regain his balance.

As I teetered there, on the edge, I had it in mind that,

"You're going in there.

"There's no way you're going back. You idiot."

David falls headfirst into the water.

He's not wearing a life jacket,

but somehow manages to grab one of the taxi boat's ropes.

But he doesn't have the strength to pull himself out.

The boat man was getting the life ring to pass down to me

as I'm approaching the boat to, hopefully, pull me out of the water.

But David knows it's not going to be that easy.

I weigh 14st...and, wet through, probably weigh 16st,

so there's no way he's going to pull me out of the water.

Luckily, another boat owner has seen it all and calls the coastguard.

And at this time, we're still drifting across the river

with the tide, heading towards the sea.

The Mayday is relayed to the RNLI at Conwy bay.

I was working in, literally, the house next-door

to the life boat station.

Pager went off. It was an immediate response call.

The personal camera, worn by helmsman Peter Hughes

shows the speed of their response.

We were in the lifeboat station in less than a minute,

and I think we were actually kitted up

and on the water within about six minutes.

David's head is still being held above the water

by the water taxi driver but they're drifting

into the middle of the river.

By this time, three or four minutes had passed

and I'm still in the water and I'm still feeling cold.

The boat, slowly but surely, drifted in towards the inner pontoon

and, as luck would have it,

it sort of settled between two yachts.

It's a vital stroke of luck.

But the pontoon they've been caught against is deserted.

David's been in the freezing river for ten minutes.

He's close to losing consciousness.

The longer he's in the water, the greater the danger.

Hang on, hang on.

I could have just done with somebody to put their arm around me

and say, "It's all right. I've got you.

"I know they can get you out of the mess that you're in."

The lifeboat crew race around the coast.

They search for the taxi boat and spot David hanging on for dear life.

David is at great risk of hypothermia.

The lifeboat volunteers need to grab him quickly.

All right, mate.

From when we initially arrived and he was in the water,

he was definitely drifting into unconsciousness.

There was only one person struggling to hold on to him.

He'd been holding him for...ten minutes.

So I grab hold of him.

Even then, it's going to be tricky to bring him out.

I think, to assist us, Alan actually jumped in the water

so we could hold on, give a little bit of assistance from below.

It's what David has been praying for.

I saw something orange in my right eye going past,

which turned out to be the RIB,

and one of the guys on the RIB jumped off in the water at the side of me.

He put his arm round me.

OK.

It takes the strength of all three men to haul David onto the pontoon.

Give them to me. Put them there.

OK. We're coming, we're coming.

-OK.

-OK.

Even as they...I can only describe it as skull dragged me out of the water,

it was still a feeling of relief,

that I'm going the right way.

I've done the going in bit. Now I'm doing the coming out bit.

We unceremoniously carried him along the jetty.

Dave, you OK? Yeah, all right.

-Ready?

-One, two, three, go.

-'We put him into a lifeboat.

'I don't think it was particularly dignified but we got him in.'

From the side.

David has reached the safety of the lifeboat

but he's still in real danger.

As he was drifting in and out of consciousness,

it was important for us to try and keep him conscious.

One way of that, is just to engage with him and talk with him.

David is showing signs of hypothermia.

If he falls unconscious, his heart rate could drop dangerously low

and he could die.

There's one of the lifeboat crew shouting at me all the time,

"Keep your eyes open.

"Stay with us."

And all I wanted to do was relax and close my eyes,

and probably, ultimately, go to sleep.

OK, Dave, keep on talking, mate.

The lifeboat crew get David back to land,

where they wrap him in a duvet to try and raise his body temperature,

which is now dangerously low.

The ambulance is on its way. Peter and his team need

to look after the 70-year-old until they arrive.

Within minutes, the paramedics are on the scene

and load David into the ambulance.

David's partner, Susan, has been at home, totally unaware of the drama.

She heads to the hospital as soon as she hears the news.

They took me to where David was,

and I think that is when it really hit home, what had happened.

He was as white as this cloth.

I've never seen a person so white.

It's just like looking at a dead body.

But, in fact, David recovers his health and colour.

I asked them how he was and they said his heart rate was all right,

his pulse and everything was OK, and that he was going to be OK.

OK.

I think, maybe, the fact is, if the lifeboat hadn't got there

in time, I wouldn't have been sat at a hospital bedside.

I would have been...sitting outside a mortuary, I think.

-OK!

-OK.

Three months after his life-threatening experience,

David is back on board.

Both he and Susan are hugely relieved

they still have the opportunity to enjoy their retirement,

and sail their boat.

Everything we do, we do it together.

Everything that we've, sort of, got, we've got together.

I don't think I could have done them,

or would have wanted to do them, without him.

I did contemplate what would happen if you did just close your eyes

and just let go.

But that's a give-up situation,

rather than a determined, "I'm going to get out of this" situation.

But I reckon, 15 minutes...

and your number would be up.

OK, you're not going to give up on me now, are you?

Still to come on Close Calls...

Clinging to a ladder, a driver who can't swim

attempts to climb to safety before he's submerged in 12 feet of water.

I was determined not to drown.

I was determined to get back to that car

and get on that aerial and call 999.

Melbourn, in Cambridgeshire,

a 999 call comes through to East of England Ambulance HQ.

A terrible accident has happened as 63-year-old Richard Game

is chopping wood in his back garden. His wife, Brenda, is indoors.

Now it's up to her to stop the blood pumping out of his arm,

as paramedics head to the couple's house.

-There was quite a lot of blood.

-Sort of, on the floor, the walls...

It had obviously sprayed on the walls as well.

Richard is deteriorating fast.

He really was going.

Brenda and Richard Game have been together since they were teenagers.

We've been very happily married for 43 years

and...hopefully, for another 43.

Without him, I do not know where I would be because I have a lot

of problems health-wise, and I just really couldn't survive without him.

Richard takes his job of looking after Brenda seriously.

He's a very practical man.

One weekday morning in June, he's chopping up scrap wood

to store for their wood burner, using a circular saw.

So, you put the wood in, start the saw, and then,

as you pull it down, the guard pulls up and cuts through the wood.

But this saw is new and lighter than the one Richard's accustomed

to using, and that's about to have devastating consequences.

As I brought the saw down to cut, it caught on something.

It was in the air and came down on my arm.

I suppose the whole thing only took...half a second.

Brenda is inside getting ready to go out shopping,

unaware of what's happening in the garden.

Richard, however, instantly knows he's suffered a catastrophic injury.

Blood was literally squirting out.

You realise immediately - this is bad.

At that point, I rushed into the house.

I was just getting my bag together and my shoes on.

Five minutes later, I know I would have been out of the house.

I could see from this room, that he had his hand over the sink,

and I could see the blood gushing out

so I knew it was serious.

Brenda immediately dials 999. This is the call she made that day.

Call handler, Megan Llewellyn,

is trying to get as much info as possible from Brenda.

All I was concentrating on was stopping the blood

coming out of my arm cos, even at this point,

it was still pulsing through my fingers, and so on.

As soon as the call came through,

an emergency team was dispatched to the couple's home.

By chance, the nearest paramedics are specialists in high-risk

emergencies and carry kit to deal with exactly this type of trauma.

First to respond is Darrel Singh.

From the description of the call,

we had a circular saw and a partial amputation

so we knew it wasn't going to be... a straightforward job.

Colleague, Simon Probert, has also heard the call.

I think they'd mentioned there was quite a lot of bleeding

so, obviously, the nature of that incident is quite severe.

It could be pretty serious.

I wouldn't want to be on a scene like that by myself

so we offered to go along and lend a hand.

Get the patient treated a little bit quicker as well.

But the only person who can help Richard right now is Brenda.

Brenda has to keep Richard calm.

But Richard's beginning to lose consciousness.

At that point, Richard was starting to slide,

so I held the towels over his arm.

Richard's body is reacting to the extreme injury.

Then I started to feel queasy through the blood loss.

I guess your body is literally shutting down.

Brenda fears she's losing her husband.

He wasn't really conscious enough to talk to. He really was going.

If the ambulance didn't arrive soon, I knew I was dying.

I couldn't keep losing blood like this and survive.

Richard's body struggles to cope

with the amount of blood he's losing.

We're all aware of the dangers when we're driving

and we hope that we could take evasive action if necessary,

but sometimes that's where the problem begins.

The village of Rumburgh, in Suffolk.

A driver clings to a rescue ladder as emergency crews try

to save him from the roof of his crashed car.

A shocked, local resident takes photos of the incident unfolding

in the middle of the 12-foot-deep garden pond.

When the fire service arrive, all that's keeping the driver,

who can't swim, from slipping into the water,

is his hold on the car's aerial.

He was petrified to let go of that aerial with the second hand,

thinking, "What is going to happen if I let go of this?"

Cos that was his lifeline. That aerial was...all he had.

25-year-old butcher, Rick Nichols, is used to early starts.

It's 3am on a cold March morning,

and he's making his way to work through the winding country roads,

when suddenly something appears in the path of his car.

Just out of nowhere, deer come across the road.

I just swerved away to avoid it.

Next thing I knew, I was in about 12 feet of water.

Rick has missed the deer, but crashed through a garden fence

and into a tree trunk before landing in a 12-foot-deep garden pond.

He's trapped inside the car and, even worse, he can't swim.

The water was coming through into the car. I was panicking.

My first reaction was just to get the seatbelt off,

and get out of the car so I didn't drown.

The passenger window has smashed during the collision.

Rick manages to wriggle out as the car rapidly fills up

and climbs onto the roof.

Clinging to just the flimsy car radio aerial,

he cries for help, but the nextdoor pub is closed.

Rick can see no lights in the pitch darkness.

As he fumbles for his mobile phone,

he loses his grip on the car aerial and slips into the freezing water.

The whole of me went right under the water.

I was very determined not to drown.

I was determined to get back to that car and get on that aerial

and call 999.

He can't swim.

Somehow though, he manages to get back onto the car roof.

And he's lucky, his soaking wet phone still works.

Rick dials 999.

I was expecting my phone to be water-damaged

but when I was pressing the buttons, it was still working

so I was really lucky that it was still working after...

it must have went about six foot under the water.

The police, ambulance and fire service are immediately dispatched

and turn up to find Rick in this precarious position.

The owner of the house, Jane Davis, has awoken

to the noise of sirens and a rescue taking place in her front garden.

-She takes pictures on her phone.

-It was very cold that night.

This young lad is hanging on the roof of the car.

I think, if the railings weren't there

and the tree wasn't there, I reckon he'd had hit the pub.

Cos, you know, that must have slowed things up.

Watch commander, Stuart Hostler, is in charge of the rescue operation.

His crew have only seconds to act.

Rick is clinging to the car's fragile aerial to stop himself

going back into the water, but it may not hold much longer.

He was petrified to let go of that aerial with the second hand,

thinking "What is going to happen if I let go of this?"

Cos that was his lifeline. That aerial was all he had.

The rescue team carefully place a ladder as a bridge

to bring Rick back to dry land but he's completely terrified.

We're talking to him all the while, and saying to him,

"Look, we want to save you. You need to do this to save yourself.

"You need to grab hold of that ladder."

And after a bit of coaxing, Rick is helped across the makeshift bridge.

And once we had him on the side of the pond,

there was enough of us to grab him and heave him up and put him

onto the road, to where the ambulance service took over.

Rick is soaking wet and the overnight temperature is -2 degrees.

The paramedics are worried he may be suffering with hypothermia

but, surprisingly, he seems fine.

When they took my temperature after about ten minutes of being

in the ambulance, they were surprised that I'd almost restored to normal.

Jane's dramatic pictures show the damage to Rick's car

as it's lifted out of the pond.

It's clear he's had a very close call.

If other things on that morning didn't go my way,

I wouldn't have been here.

He was lucky he got out the car.

He was lucky he had something to hold on to.

He was lucky that he had that mobile phone.

Another ten minutes in that pond and I think that would have been it.

Back in Melbourn, in Cambridgeshire,

paramedics are heading to the home of 63-year-old Richard Game.

He's suffering from major blood loss after slicing into his arm

with a circular saw.

Richard's wife, Brenda, is doing all she can to save her husband's life

by stemming the bleeding, guided by 999 call handler, Megan Llewellyn.

The blood loss is so severe, the colour is draining from Richard.

I started to lose him.

He was losing so much blood and he was so pale.

I could see he was really worried.

Brenda's trying to keep calm and stay in charge of the situation,

while still comforting her distressed husband.

Call handler, Megan, must keep her focused.

Brenda's now making heroic efforts to reassure Richard

as the bleeding shows no signs of abating.

The paramedics reach the house eight minutes after Brenda dialled 999.

They find a kitchen splattered with Richard's blood.

-There was quite a lot of blood.

-On the floor, the walls...

It obviously sprayed on the walls as well.

So it painted the picture of a pretty nasty injury.

Brenda now has the crucial support she needs.

When the ambulance arrived, I just felt utter, sheer relief

because they know exactly what to do.

But the crew know Richard is still in grave danger.

A catastrophic haemorrhage is basically the first thing

that we would try and control.

We try and keep as much blood in the body as possible.

One of the things I noted on the walls was,

effectively, a spray of blood,

and that suggested that there may have been an arterial bleed.

Bleeding from an artery is extremely serious.

If you bleed out too much or if you get to the stage

where you've lost too much blood,

oxygen won't get to your brain and it can result in death, ultimately.

Darrel applies a special tourniquet to stem the blood flow.

It's equipment that needs professional expertise.

Earlier, call-taker Megan stopped Brenda using an amateur tourniquet,

which can cause more problems than it solves.

The tourniquet we use has been developed in conjunction

with the military and it's proved, tried and tested to save lives and save limbs.

The highly skilled emergency paramedics

arrived at the couple's home with only minutes to spare.

It's unlikely Richard could have lasted much longer.

Yeah, it was definitely time-critical.

Richard had lost a significant amount of blood.

He's taken to nearby Addenbrooke's Hospital, a major trauma centre

where a medical team has already been alerted.

They just started work on him immediately. Gave him some blood.

But they knew at that point that he was OK.

After his initial treatment, Richard goes into surgery the next morning.

Apparently I was down there for about eight hours.

Obviously the artery was damaged.

The veins had been severed and so had all the nerves,

and so on, and the muscle.

You've no idea what the real damage is until later on.

A year on, Richard has realised his hand will never quite

be the same again, but he remains upbeat.

I can grip things but I can't release them

so it's great down the pub - grab your pint, you never let go.

Richard and Brenda are eternally grateful to call handler, Megan,

the ambulance crews and the team at Addenbrooke's.

They're angels, they really are.

They've given me my husband back, you know? They saved him.

But paramedic, Simon, thinks it's Brenda herself

who made the difference that day.

The single, biggest factor for Richard was having his wife there

to stop the bleeding for him.

I love it, actually, that I can say "I owe my wife my life."

That's all for today. Join us again for more Close Calls On Camera.