Episode 7 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.

My heart's 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 wrong. Could have easily gone wrong.

And their dramatic experiences recorded on camera.

I think 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 helicopter winchman battles to save the crew of a fishing boat

tossed into the sea as their vessel vanishes beneath the waves.

I saw a life jacket float past me, I thought, "Hang on a minute,

"we've lost one."

And an 11-year-old boy pleads for help from a 999 call handler

as he struggles to save his dying dad.

The Butt of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

In the Atlantic Ocean, a fishing vessel is sinking fast.

Five crew members are clinging onto the only corner above the water.

Trying to reach them,

a winchman from the coastguard rescue helicopter.

The bottom of the hull was exposed at this point, you know,

propeller, the rudder. But the guys were still on it.

We knew that this is starting to escalate quickly.

Just as the winchman tries to board the boat,

a massive wave sends the crew hurtling into the icy sea.

Two Irish fishing boats are enjoying a perfect day out on the ocean.

This footage of the vessel, the Iuda Naofa, is being

taken by one of the crew on its sister vessel, the Star Of Hope.

The two fishing boats operate out of Galway.

They head out to the northern Atlantic Ocean and fish for mackerel

and blue whiting in trips that can last up to two weeks.

An occasional crewmember onboard the Star of Hope is engineer

Gerry Hernon.

The type of fishing we do, it's what's called pelagic.

We use two boats towing one large net in between two boats.

The two vessels were working together but they're basically one vessel.

You have to work as a pair.

Trawler fishing is a family business.

Gerry's son Eric is one of the crew onboard the Iuda Naofa

where he works alongside another father and son,

Mairtin and Micheal Conghaile.

Eric's fished on the Iuda Naofa for approximately 4.5 years,

I think it is, something like that.

They're quite a young crew, so they get on fairly well together.

Fishing is the crew's livelihood

but living out at sea means enduring ferocious conditions.

This is a risky business.

That danger's always going to be there. Any job on the sea, no matter what it is.

I mean, whether you're on an oil rig or a fishing boat,

it is a dangerous job.

One morning in January, those dangers become very evident.

Both trawlers are returning from a three-day trip fishing for mackerel

just north of the Isle of Lewis off the Atlantic coast of Scotland.

It was a very successful trip and we were on our way home.

Things were going good.

They finish fishing at 1am. A force six is blowing.

The crew grab some rest

but later that morning they realise one of the boats is in trouble.

Mairtin, the skipper of the Iuda Naofa,

he'd noticed that she had started to take on water at her head.

Nobody knows why.

It had started getting obvious then after maybe half an hour

to an hour that he was getting in trouble.

Because the boat was starting to go slightly down by the head.

Skipper Mairtin instructs his crew to get the pumps started.

But there's an electrical fault and now the water onboard is increasing.

Mairtin radios the coastguard for help.

We received a call from Malin Head

coastguard in Ireland that there was a vessel in our district

in difficulties

and required assistance.

It seemed he was taking water in the forehead part of his vessel

and he needed extra pumping assistance to pump the water out.

At 11am, the coastguard rescue helicopter is launched from

Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.

They're going to deliver an electric pump to the Iuda Naofa.

It should be enough to clear the water and keep the boat afloat.

Despite the weather, pilot Debdash Bhattacharya has good visuals that morning.

But the sea conditions are rough and he can tell the boat is struggling.

On getting close to the vessel,

you could see that she was quite nose down.

Her bow was quite low

and in the sort of three metre swell that there was there,

you could see that she was just starting

to plough through the bigger waves.

The plan is for the helicopter winchman,

Darren Jones, to deliver the pump to the fishing boat.

But the sea swell is high.

We're talking 18-20ft.

Normally when you see a fishing vessel in those sort of conditions,

it's bobbing round like a cork.

But the Iuda, she was just ploughing in.

The waves were coming across the front of the bow.

So instead, the coastguard rescue lower the pump down a high wire

onto the deck of the Iuda Naofa.

But the pilot decides to stay close by.

Having dropped the pump down to the vessel, we elected to orbit

and remain in the area to see if we could lend any further assistance.

And we just stayed within about two miles of the vessel.

And it's just as well.

Ten minutes later, another emergency call comes from the Iuda Naofa.

The crew can't get the pump going.

I suggested, why don't we say to them,

"Look, we'll get myself onboard so I can go and look at the pump."

And as we were discussing this, the Iuda then came back to us

and there was a definitive change in the tone of the skipper.

He said to us, "We're starting to list to port,"

she was starting to lean, to the left side.

And kind of starting to move with the sea

as if steering was becoming a problem,

power was becoming a problem.

As they return, the situation has deteriorated rapidly.

The left-hand side of the vessel, which is

normally well above the water, was actually starting to get swamped.

The waves were coming over the left-hand side of the vessel

so we knew that this is starting to escalate quickly.

The decision is made.

Winchman Darren needs to go down onto the vessel

and rescue the five crewmen.

The helicopter sends down a high line to the fishermen.

This cable will connect to the vessel and act as an anchor

for winchman Darren as he is lowered down on the winch cable.

The fishermen connect the high line to the boat.

Winchman Darren's ready to go.

I was literally preparing to go out the door when there was a wave

come in right down the left-hand side of the vessel.

She rose quite substantially and basically the port,

the left side of the vessel, submerged.

The coastguard rescue helicopter's onboard camera catches just

how desperate the situation has become.

The Iuda Naofa is going under.

The crew clamber over the side

and cling on as Darren hovers just feet above them.

The bottom of the hull was exposed at this point, you know,

propeller, the rudder but the guys were still on it.

They've scrambled up onto what is now the back right corner.

That was basically the only thing that was still above the surface.

It's not just the five crew at risk.

The boat is going down and the helicopter is attached

to the boat by the high line.

There's a safety mechanism designed to break the cable

and prevent the aircraft being pulled into the sea

but Darren isn't going to wait for it to kick in.

I wanted rid of that rope.

It could have entangled me, it could have entangled any of the guys,

it was physically attached to the fishing vessel at this point

so it had to go.

But as Darren prepares to sever the line, disaster.

A massive wave throws four of the stricken fishermen into the ocean.

In that instance, winchman Darren releases the high line cable.

But one crewman is still clinging on to the hull

just a few feet away from the spinning propeller.

Just in the nick of time,

he leaps off as the boat disappears under the water.

From us establishing the high line to the vessel sinking

was something like 58 seconds.

It was incredibly quick.

Later - Gerry watches helplessly as his son, Eric,

and four crewmates are thrown around by the Atlantic swell,

at risk of being dragged beneath the waves.

You've got nets, you've got ropes, you've got various other debris,

you don't know what could actually tangle somebody or take them down.

Also coming up - no-one knows they are missing.

Two pensioners adrift on the river at night

and being pulled out to sea.

You're just drifting

and the speed it takes you up there is quite phenomenal.

Leicester, in the East Midlands.

A frantic 999 call has just come through to the ambulance service.

It's from a child.

Josh Williamson is only 11 and he's petrified.

His dad, Tommy, has collapsed on the floor and is unconscious.

Josh is a sea cadet, he's learned CPR

and already tried to revive his dad but he knows he needs help.

I put like one hand like that and then one hand on top.

And then I just started pumping.

The ambulance is racing to the scene, but for now Josh

needs to keep on pumping if he's going to save his dad's life.

11-year-old Josh and his dad, 56-year-old Tommy Elverston,

love sharing a bit of father-son time together.

We went to Cornwall last year which were beautiful. Absolutely stunning.

I think Josh loved it.

I spend quite a lot of time with my dad.

We get on well and we spend the weekend with each other.

It's Sunday morning. Josh is having breakfast at his dad's flat.

But Tommy isn't feeling very well.

He was complaining that he had heartburn.

And then he went into the bedroom.

And soon Josh hears some worrying noises coming from behind the door.

All I could hear was some funny breathing. And then I went in.

And I saw him on the floor.

There was, like, blood coming from his nose.

And his eyes were slowly shutting.

My first thought when I saw him, I thought he was dead.

I was scared because I didn't want to lose my dad.

Tommy is in cardiac arrest. His heart has stopped beating.

Josh is a member of the sea cadets and trained in CPR.

Instinct kicks in and he springs into action.

Josh doesn't know it yet but he is about to save his dad's life.

I put like one hand like that and then one hand on top,

near the end of the rib cage.

And then I just started pumping.

But Tommy isn't responding.

Josh needs to get some emergency assistance fast.

PHONE RINGS

Call handler Colette Storr answers the young boy's desperate call for help.

He didn't know exactly what had happened.

All he knew is his dad wasn't breathing on the floor.

Colette needs to try and keep the distraught boy calm.

It's imperative that Josh continues to perform CPR on his dad.

If he does nothing,

Tommy could be dead before the ambulance has even arrived.

The earliest we start CPR, the better chance the person has at coming back.

One, two, three, four.

With panic-stricken Josh still pumping away at his dad's chest,

the ambulance crew arrive.

Rapid response paramedic Rachael Cavill is one of the first on the scene.

She finds Tommy unconscious, bleeding from the head

and close to death.

You've got no heartbeat, he wasn't making any respiratory effort,

hence why we started CPR and we started to ventilate him

in an attempt to try and get all that started.

Rachael and the other paramedics use a defibrillator,

the machine which delivers electrical energy to the heart

to try and get it beating again.

We delivered two shocks to Tommy

and we managed to get Tommy's heart started again.

Finally, 20 minutes after his heart completely stopped,

Tommy is showing signs of life. Josh's mum, Hayley, has been called.

She races over to see her son.

As soon as I saw my mum I ran to her.

I just gave Josh a cuddle.

My first instinct was just to grab him and give him a cuddle,

just reassure him, he's in the best hands possible.

Tommy is rushed to hospital where he can get the critical care

he so desperately needs.

Tommy was transferred to the catheter lab which is a theatre

which allows them to perform a procedure that unblocks

the artery in Tommy's heart and allows blood flow to be restored.

Incredibly, six months after he cheated death,

Tommy is recovering and has no memory of the horrifying ordeal.

He's been diagnosed with myocarditis, a virus that attacks the heart muscle.

He's now got a pacemaker fitted to ensure that

if he has another attack, his heart won't completely stop.

Now I have to just go up every three months or so,

I think, to have this checked.

And if my heart does go, it will kick it in.

There's no doubt that without Josh's desperate 999 call,

his dad would have died.

-That phone call...

-SHE EXHALES LOUDLY

..it's heart-wrenching. Just, it's...

It pulls the heartstrings, daily.

Amazing. Very, very, very proud.

And quick-thinking Josh has even received

an award for his bravery from the ambulance service.

I feel really, really happy because I saved my dad's life.

If I weren't there, my dad would have been gone.

Sometimes when things go wrong it's down to sheer bad luck.

And sometimes getting rescued is down to sheer good luck.

Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth.

The RNLI desperately search for two pensioners who have

brought their small yacht alongside a jetty for repairs.

Someone has realised the men's vehicle is still in the car park

and the boat is missing.

They've been out of contact for five hours.

It's 1am, temperatures are plummeting

and there's no sign of the men or their boat.

At that time of night it's pitch-black,

there's no lighting in the harbour and there's lots of obstacles.

76-year-old Thomas Prunty has always enjoyed a spot of recreational

sea fishing, regularly chartering boats from the south coast.

Recently, he decided to buy his own boat,

a 21ft DIY project called Kingfisher.

I was going to repair it, clean it, make it look very nice

and then put it back on the mooring to go fishing.

It's a cold April evening and Thomas and his friend,

Ray, are ashore in Langstone Harbour in Portsmouth.

They want to fit an engine to Kingfisher

but they're running late. It's already getting dark.

And while preparing to move the boat from the sea,

Thomas stumbles into the water.

When I got wet, I fell off the boat to a degree into the shallow end and

I fell back on my back and I took my coat off and I took the coat off

and put it on to the shore and my phone was in the coat.

Thomas doesn't know it yet but not having his phone with him

will prove to be an almost fatal mistake.

The two men have already unsuccessfully tried one motor

and they're about to try a different one

when they realise they are on the move.

They're not tied up to the shore.

Put the other engine on, that wouldn't start either.

In the meantime, we are in the middle of the stream.

And we're going up the estuary.

Unattached, and with no power,

the boat starts moving with a forceful tide.

You've got no control with your steerage.

You're just drifting

and the speed it takes you up there is quite phenomenal.

The surging water drags Kingfisher through the busy harbour

which is littered with other moored vessels and buoys.

There aren't any people around to help

and Thomas's phone is back on the shore and Ray doesn't have one.

We'd bumped into one little boat

and we managed to get hold of another boat and I tried to hold on to it,

because of the strength of the tide I couldn't.

So, I let go of that and we went on and on and on.

Then you have the real problem, then I'm frightened.

The major worry is that the boat will be pulled out with the tide into the middle of the sea.

But, finally, Thomas and Ray find a way to halt their drift into danger.

We managed to grab hold of the Langstone Harbour boat.

We tied off, right, so now we're safe to a degree.

Because once you're tied to the boat, at least you're not going

to crash into something that might have a jagged edge, you know,

that could breach the hull.

If it breaches the hull, then the boat sinks, you're in a lot more trouble.

They've moored themselves to the Langstone Harbour pilot boat

which is anchored to the seabed.

The Kingfisher has drifted half a mile along the coast.

It's getting dark and becoming colder.

They can see the lights on the distant shore

but all they can do is wait and hope.

We're sitting there, we're safe. But we are cold, I'm wet.

No, I don't think I would have liked to have slept there for the morning.

The hours pass. It's now half past midnight.

Thomas and Ray have been sitting out in the cold,

stranded, for more than four hours.

No-one knows where they are or even that they've floated off.

Fortunately, someone back at the harbour realises their car

is still there but their boat isn't and alerts the coastguard.

The Portsmouth RNLI launch a search and rescue mission.

Their onboard camera is rolling.

At that time of night, it's pitch-black,

there's no lighting in the harbour and there's lots of obstacles.

We focus mainly around the moored boats and the buoys

because if any incidents come to happen, people tend to sort of

grab onto the nearest thing that's going to keep them safe.

After half an hour, at 1am, one of the rescue boats spots the Kingfisher.

It's a massive relief for Thomas.

Fortunately, the very nice chaps that came along on a boat saved us.

And I tell you what, that's a wonderful thing to see them.

It really was.

Helmsman Jim and his crew help the exhausted pensioners across

and onto the boat.

His immediate thoughts turn to their wellbeing.

When we found the gentlemen,

they were obviously very pleased to see us.

There was an element of relief on their faces, that was for sure.

Our concerns actually turned to sort of a medical perspective.

He was still wet. Our main area of concern was therefore hypothermia.

Thomas and Ray are taken to dry land

and checked over in a waiting ambulance.

Luckily, neither of them need any further treatment.

The pair have had an incredibly lucky escape.

The biggest danger, possibly, of the evening,

was if the tide had turned and we hadn't managed to grab

the Langstone Harbour boat, we could have gone out to sea.

Luckily on this occasion, the gentleman were found safe

and well and the situation resolved.

It doesn't take much for these sort of situations to turn nasty

and for a very different outcome.

Back to the Outer Hebrides off the Isle of Lewis

where five fishermen are in great danger.

They've been swept off their boat, the Iuda Naofa,

just seconds before it disappeared under the surface.

On the scene, the Stornoway coastguard rescue helicopter.

This was no longer lifting people from the deck of a ship,

it was retrieving people from the water.

So the whole tempo picks up a beat at that stage.

Watching on from the Star of Hope,

the stricken vessel's sister ship, is engineer Gerry Hernon.

His son, Eric, has been swept into the sea before his eyes.

He knows there is now a real danger of Eric being dragged under by the debris in the water.

You've got nets, you've got ropes, you've got various other debris, you don't know

what could actually, you know, tangle somebody or take them down.

I mean, even from our own point of view, there was a danger to us.

Even going up so close, you don't know what debris

will come floating up from the boat.

It's up to the helicopter crew

and winchman Darren to get all five fishermen out of the water.

But with a swell up to six metres,

he's struggling to keep track of them all.

There was a group of four swept to my left and one guy to my right

and I was just constantly trying to keep a headcount

and understand where everybody was.

There was a moment where my heart sank that I counted five

and then about three, four seconds later I saw a life jacket float

past me so I thought, "Oh, hang on a minute, we've lost one."

So I had another quick look round and I said, "They've spread that quickly!"

Looking over my right shoulder, I saw two guys, three to my left,

still got five, still happy as you can be and know

we've got all five on the surface still.

Darren attaches a safety strap to the nearest fisherman and winches him up.

Behind them, the fishing boat's life raft has just surfaced

and two of the crew make their way towards it.

As Darren is about to go back down to rescue a second crew member,

he catches sight of the life raft.

I could actually see two guys, that were off to the right,

they were clambering onboard the life raft, you know, it self-inflates.

So, that was a really good moment.

With one man on the aircraft and two in the lifeboat, Darren's attention

turns to the final two crew members who are still in the water.

We got the second guy out who was actually clinging on to what

turns out to be his father, actually.

He didn't have a life jacket and it looks as if his suit was

taking on quite a lot of water, as well, and he was really quite heavy.

There was a lot of water in his suit.

And as Darren lifts a third seaman from the water, the Star of Hope,

the sister ship of the sunken vessel,

moves towards the inflatable lifeboat.

Gerry is delighted to see a familiar face onboard.

My son and one of the other crewmen, they got into the life raft.

We went over to the life raft

and took those two guys out of the life raft.

Obviously, it's a relief once you get them onboard.

I mean, from my own point of view, I mean,

last thing I want to see is my own son in the water.

Surprisingly, after nearly going down with their boat,

all five crew members are showing no signs of injury.

The three thankful fishermen who were air-lifted to safety

by the coastguard helicopter

are flown to the Western Isles Hospital in Stornoway.

They've escaped with their lives

but in a matter of seconds they've lost their livelihood.

Finlay MacLeod of the Fishermen's Mission is on hand

to meet them at the hospital.

The charity has helped the crewmen rebuild their lives,

both financially and emotionally.

When I got to the hospital,

to Accident & Emergency, I found the three fishermen

and they were just climbing out of their survival suits.

They were miserable, they were cold, they were despondent,

they were wet, they were hungry, they were really in despair.

They had lost everything they had worked for for over 20 years.

They were certainly very grateful for all the help that was provided to them.

It's been a traumatic experience for everyone involved.

It was an incredible event.

The speed that she went with and the violence that the vessel

sank in was just, it was astonishing.

GERRY: It could have been a whole different scenario.

There could be five guys gone. And that's it.

That's how close it could have been.

It's not really until you get back to your base

and you sit down and you look at the video footage afterwards

that you're then struck by the enormity of what's just happened.

Some people came very close to dying that day.

That's all for now, join us

next time for more tales of survival from people who've had a Close Call.