Episode 5 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call. A moment of danger

when life can hang in the balance.

Oh, my God!

A split second where the outcome could go either way.

If he's alive, it's a miracle, really.

The difference between disaster and survival.

He was shouting, "Don't die, Mummy!"

These are people who've been there and lived to tell the tale.

YELLING

I thought he'd broken his neck.

Their instincts and resources,

coupled with the quick thinking of others

helped to pull them through.

We were just engulfed in flames.

And their dramatic experiences, recorded on camera.

I wasn't going to be coming up. It was curtains, it was over.

It's a day they'll never forget.

The day they had...a close call.

Today on Close Calls...

It's the moment every parent dreads.

A four-year-old boy is choking and unconscious.

A CCTV camera shows his family frantically trying to save him.

I feel guilty because he's my grandkid,

and he should've...I should've been able to do that.

I thought he was dead.

Eh... So I ran out, I ran outside screaming.

And...

A photographer captures the terrifying moment two men

are suddenly swept away by a huge wave.

There was nothing left on the road,

and the automatic reaction was, "They're gone."

A phone belonging to one of the victims records the whole accident.

It was on you so fast, it just took us away.

Jimmy, are you all right?

Are you all right, Jimmy?

Renfrew, West Scotland.

A grandmother desperately tries to save her grandson from choking.

With nothing working, in a panic, she calls 999.

His life is on the line. Neighbours rush to the scene.

Four-year-old James is choking, struggling to breathe,

and has lost consciousness.

That was it. He just collapsed and his eyes rolled.

They need help fast.

For grandmother Caroline Brown, family means everything.

She even lives around the corner from her daughter, Donna,

and grandson, James.

My house isn't a home without children.

I've got two daughters and a son.

I've got three grandsons and a granddaughter.

James is the youngest of them all.

Caroline and James are inseparable.

-Help you breathe.

-Help me breathe?

-Uh-huh.

-Thank you.

My mum's spoiled James rotten.

The two of them are really, really close.

He's the most loving boy you could get.

Always wants to please.

He loves everybody. Everybody's his friend.

A former nursery nurse, Caroline goes to extraordinary

lengths to prevent any accidents, especially with food.

If I was making sausages,

I would take the skin off it.

If I was giving him potato scones,

I would cut them into soldiers and halve them.

I was peeling the grape skin off

and chopping it up. And they'll go, "Oh, for goodness' sake,

"Gran's at it again." You know what I mean?

It was a daily joke

about the grape situation cos Mum's like, "He can choke on it.

"He can choke on it." Peeling the skin and cutting them up.

I'm like, "Mum, he's four."

It's a sunny Friday,

and grandma Caroline is making lunch for the family.

Her home security CCTV shows Donna arriving just after midday.

My mum had his lunch ready,

so he was sitting at the table. And it was sandwiches and a yoghurt

that he was having for lunch.

Donna doesn't have time for lunch,

so just grabs some grapes from the fridge.

But that simple choice will have terrible consequences.

Me and James are sitting at the table

and my mum's on the sofa.

I had turned round to speak to her

and he'd stole the grape off the bunch

and he stuck it in the yoghurt and put it in his mouth.

Before James has a chance to take a bite, the grape slides

straight to the back of his mouth and gets caught in his throat.

So he'd choked on it.

So my mum had dived out and ran out into the kitchen,

and she's shouting, "Grab him, grab him, get it out, get it out."

Seeing James choking on the grape, Donna tries to dislodge it

by slapping his back.

She's going, "It's OK, Mum, I'll get it,"

and she's...she's hitting his back.

I thought it would have came up,

but, see, the more I was banging it...at him,

he just turned round and looked at me,

and I think it was the fear in his eyes that frightened me.

He was struggling for breath.

He couldnae make any sound.

And she's going, "Mummy, it's not coming.

"I need to go and get help."

Hoping for help from neighbours, they take James outside.

As the CCTV shows, Caroline continues to try to dislodge the grape

by turning her little grandson upside down and slapping his back.

At that point, his lips were going blue

and he was just going limp.

And then that was it. He just collapsed and his eyes rolled

and he was...

That's when I panicked.

I just couldn't do nothing.

Nothing at all could I do for him.

I feel guilty because he's my grandkid, and he should've...

I should've been able to do that.

Frantic with worry,

gran Caroline knows she needs more help.

She takes James back inside and dials 999.

Panic-stricken mum Donna runs into the street calling to

neighbours for help.

I thought he was dead.

So I ran out, I ran outside screaming.

Across the road, neighbour Janice hears Donna's cries.

And I thought, "I need to go out and see what this is."

And there I seen Donna.

And she was just screaming,

shouting, "Somebody help us, help us."

I ran across. I seen Caroline at the door with James,

and she's on the phone

and she's got him underneath her arm.

Within seconds, four neighbours come to their aid.

One man desperately tries to dislodge the grape.

And nothing was happening.

He...he... He just looked dead.

Other neighbours take over

and attempt to unblock James' windpipe,

but nothing is working.

Panicked grandmother Caroline is talking

with the emergency call handler.

I'm on the phone, I'm saying, "Please, please..."

And I know that girl done a lot to try and calm me down.

Of course, she's got to find out what's happening.

The 999 call handler explains how to position James on the ground

to check for blockages in his mouth.

The CCTV footage shows the neighbours following

the call handler's first aid instructions as Caroline relays them.

When I had done that, he seemed to kind of come conscious again.

I don't know if he was getting a wee bit of air through.

But it seemed to help.

But James is far from being out of danger

and mum Donna is increasingly agitated.

I was very, very anxious.

That's all I kept saying to my friend Bianca,

"Where's the ambulance, where's the ambulance?"

As paramedics reach the family's home, little James' life starts

to slip away.

Suddenly, James' heart rate dropped

from 96 beats per minute

down to 26, very dramatically.

I was petrified

and I kept saying to the paramedic,

"Is he going to be all right?

"Is he going to be all right?"

Bantry, South-West Ireland.

Businessman John Murphy is filming the stormy sea

threatening to close off this road.

It's the only way in and out of his seafood factory.

He and his friend Jimmy are debating

whether the road's safe to make deliveries

when out of nowhere...

..a massive wave sweeps them off of their feet.

The terrifying moment is captured on John's camera phone

The two men are separated by the force of the wave,

and John loses sight of his friend.

Jimmy, are you all right?

Are you all right, Jimmy?

Entrepreneur John Murphy is very much a family man.

I have seven children.

I have four boys and then I have three girls after that.

John's other passion is his mussel farming business, which he

started up over 30 years ago here, in Bantry.

Murphy's Irish Seafood, located in this idyllic spot,

has since grown into a global company,

supplying local produce to countries all over the world.

We started farming mussels here in the early '80s,

and they grew quite well.

And we produced a very, very nice mussel.

The business developed, and then we started cooking

the product ourselves.

And then we started exporting into other markets.

And it's fulfilling the orders for those foreign markets

that's on John's mind this cold January morning.

Localised storms have been battering his factory

on the southwest coast of Ireland for weeks.

The weather was just horrendous.

I've never seen it as bad.

John's worried it will affect his business.

Today, he's desperate to get his latest catch off to Italy.

It takes about three days, three to four days to get to Italy.

It had to be there before the end of the week,

so that's why we were quite restricted on time.

And it had to go out on that day.

John needs to assess whether he can get an articulated lorry

load of mussels out of the isolated factory via the only available road.

But it's being battered by waves and is barely accessible.

He films the turbulent sea with his phone as he considers

the problem with his friend Jimmy, a local road worker.

Jimmy's a great guy.

He helped me, and he was assessing the damage as well.

John and Jimmy move further down the road to see if it's passable.

But the final decision as to whether or not the road can be opened

to traffic rests with the local council.

We were looking for the road,

that there was enough width to get the truck in.

And therefore, I'd call the council engineer.

And she was coming out to meet me.

On her way out, when she was leaving the office,

it so happened the photographer from The Examiner

called in to say, "Look, I need to get a few photographs of the coast

"and the damage that's done," and she said,

"Come with me and you'll see damage."

Council engineer Ruth arrives at the top of the road

with local newspaper photographer Adrian Cronin.

He's keen to take some pictures of the stormy seas

for the evening edition.

But his camera's about to capture something even more dramatic.

He begins taking pictures of the road leading to John's factory.

Then suddenly, what appeared to be two people appeared

at the bottom of the road.

And one of them seemed to have a camera phone in his hand,

filming or photographing what was going on.

It's John. He's hoping his video will explain to his customers

how the stormy weather is affecting his ability to deliver their goods.

I was taking video of the road.

And I know I turned out to the sea.

And, yeah, there was a wave coming,

but there was nothing that was extraordinary about it.

It looked more or less the same as other waves.

But this one just... The force...

It must have gone eight, ten feet up into the air.

I mean, you didn't hear it because it was on you so fast

and it just took us away.

This is the moment John gets swept off his feet

and carried along by the sea.

All the time, his phone camera,

in its waterproof case,

is still rolling,

capturing his desperate situation.

Adrian's pictures show the massive wave breaking onto the road,

swamping John and Jimmy.

The two men have suddenly disappeared from view.

They've been washed away.

And then, as soon as it receded,

there was nothing left on the road.

And the automatic reaction was, "They're gone."

It's a chilling scene.

Adrian fears John and Jimmy have been dragged out into the violent waves.

In the near freezing conditions,

in such an angry sea, he knows they'll have no chance of survival.

The engineer was crying and she was saying,

"Ring emergency services."

She got on and she started ringing for coastguard and everything.

But the first thought was that these two people were dead.

But John is alive

and fighting for his life.

He's being tossed about in the current.

His camera is still filming.

Water came in and obviously took my body, took me,

and I was on my back and I could feel myself

just being carried along underwater.

So, it was bang, bang, bang.

And you didn't know where you were going

because you were moving inside this wave.

Had it gone out to sea, I wasn't going to be coming up.

I really wasn't. It was...curtains, it was over.

As the fierce water throws him around, John somehow manages

to grasp hold of something.

I was passing something and I hit. And it so happened it was a gate

and I was able to hang on to the gate.

But the water kept pushing me along.

John clings onto the broken gate for dear life,

praying the strong current doesn't suck him out to sea.

And as the wave recedes, he realises he can just about stand up.

Jimmy, though, is nowhere to be seen.

I was able to get up and then realise

that I wasn't out at sea, I was on the land.

So my first thought was, "Jesus, where's Jimmy?"

COUGHING

John has swallowed a lot of sea water,

but he's more concerned with finding his friend.

I knew Jimmy couldn't swim, so I was...I really was concerned.

John knows Jimmy's unlikely to survive long in the sea.

With his camera still rolling, he begins a desperate search for him.

So I started calling for Jimmy.

Jimmy, are you all right?

COUGHING

Are you all right, Jimmy?

John frantically looks for his friend, but nothing.

When there were no replies, when I called and called and called,

I was really concerned.

Suddenly, above the noise of the waves,

he hears a muffled voice and hurries towards it.

Jimmy! Are you all right, Jimmy?

And then... I mean, just hearing his voice answering was...

The relief of that was just unbelievable.

MUFFLED SPEECH

I got carried up the road.

John's found him. Astonishingly,

they've both survived the terrifying ordeal.

There was a bog area.

And he'd been carried through the bog area

and he was passing a tree, and he caught onto the tree

because the bog was much lower than the road.

He finished up about 35 yards away from where I finished up.

I was taken in one direction and he was taken in another direction.

John helps to rescue his struggling friend.

I was able to get down...

There was a little bit of a bridge area,

so I was able to get some footing there.

And I was able to... Jimmy was able to reach me.

And I was able to pull him across and pull him out.

And... Oh! The relief of that was just...

I've never experienced anything like that relief, really.

Because I was...I was sure Jimmy was gone.

The massive wave had pushed John and Jimmy from the path

into fields and ditches.

Reunited, they make their way back to the road,

much to the astonishment of Ruth, the council engineer,

and photographer Adrian, who witnessed the whole event.

The two appeared...

And I...

We couldn't believe it.

It was crazy.

John and Jimmy decide to take the rest of the day off.

They're uninjured but still shocked.

John has a remedy for that.

I remember that evening coming back out to meet Jimmy.

And brought Jimmy over a bottle of brandy.

And I said, "Jimmy..."

And the two of us sat down and we had a drink,

-and Jimmy was in good form.

-HE LAUGHS

This is the spot where it happened, captured on a calmer day.

The wave came from the sea, scooping up John and Jimmy from this road,

flinging them into this overgrown wooded area.

Photographer Adrian can't believe they're still here

to tell the tale.

When I saw the force of that thing coming in,

I don't know how those two boys survived.

It was an absolute miracle.

John has been able to relive the day,

but Jimmy doesn't like talking about it.

It's incredible that they both survived being pummelled

by the gigantic wave.

They could have easily been swept out into the stormy open sea.

We were very lucky.

If we had gone to sea, there was no way we would've been...

we could've got out of that alive.

Absolutely no way.

Any medical crisis is stressful, but when there's a young child involved,

well, it's very emotional for all concerned.

Back to Renfrew.

½Four-year-old James is choking on a grape and has lost consciousness.

Mum Donna, gran Caroline and their neighbours have all tried

first-aid techniques to unblock his airway.

But nothing is working.

The distraught family have called for help.

Paramedics are on the way, and they need to get there fast.

I heard the ambulance and I just thought, "Thank God they're here."

Just eight minutes after gran Caroline dialled 999,

fast response paramedics Stephen and Ian arrive.

A very emotional scene.

You've got the parents, the grandparents,

bystanders pleading with you to help.

What was in front of them wasn't a very nice sight.

It doesn't matter how long you're in a job,

if it affects a child,

there will be that wee bit extra adrenaline.

It was like a sense of relief

when the paramedics arrived. I thought, "OK, they're here.

"They know what they're doing, they can make it better."

CCTV footage outside the family home shows the paramedics trying

to get the grape to move, but it still doesn't.

Stephen then uses a suction pump to remove excess saliva

from James' windpipe.

What we don't want with an unconscious person

is any secretions getting down

the windpipe and then to the lungs, cos that can cause

aspirated pneumonia.

His airway is clearer, but James

still isn't breathing properly.

Next, paramedic Stephen uses a manual ventilator to force

air into James' lungs, giving him much needed oxygen.

Mum Donna kneels beside her unconscious son,

clasping his hand in support.

I was trying to reassure him

at the same time, but I was frightened.

I was petrified.

And I just kept saying to the paramedic,

"Is he going to be all right? Is he going to be all right?"

But despite all the paramedics' efforts, James is still unresponsive

and the grape is still blocking his windpipe.

An ambulance with more specialist equipment arrives.

The medics lift James' lifeless form onto the trolley,

his limp arm dangling off the side of the bed.

They wheel him quickly to the ambulance,

closely followed by his mum and grandma.

Once we got him in the ambulance, however,

things changed for the worse.

Suddenly, James' heart rate dropped

from 96 beats per minute

down to 26, very dramatically.

And without doing anything immediately,

he would have passed away quite quickly.

A lack of oxygen is causing James' heart rate to plummet.

With the four-year-old's life in the balance,

Stephen decides he needs to perform a more invasive procedure

to unblock his airway.

He uses a piece of kit called a laryngoscope that

flattens his tongue and gives him a better view of the obstruction.

As we did that,

I could see the top of the grape

just above James' vocal cords.

But the next step is risky

and could make the already extreme situation even worse.

I was a wee bit nervous about knocking it further down

and then not getting access to it to retrieve it

so what we decided to do is use some suction -

on a hard suction catheter,

put that down onto the top of the grape

with the suction on full power.

I managed to bring the grape up

from the vocal cords

to a position that I was confident I could get the forceps around

the body of the grape

and take it out.

But this procedure Stephen is performing with the forceps requires

absolute precision.

Any sudden movement could have tragic consequences.

And the ambulance went to move and Stephen shouted stop,

because he had a hold of the grape.

And the next thing I heard...

"We've got it, we've got it!"

And he got the grape out and he went,

"Was that it? Is that all?"

And I'm like that, "I think so."

With James' windpipe cleared of its obstruction,

Donna gets a vital sign that his condition seems to be improving.

And instantly, his hands just heated up.

Going from freezing cold to heating up instantly.

With his airway unblocked but James still unconscious,

the ambulance races to the nearest A & E.

On the way up the hill to the emergency department

at RAH,

James started to cry,

which is a very good thing to hear cos we know

they're conscious and we know the area is relatively

clear and they're breathing.

As James lies in A & E,

the medical staff realise he's far from recovered.

James was getting very agitated

with the fact that the oxygen mask was on his face.

When they took the mask off, his oxygen level

dipped very, very fast.

And that's when they realised that, no, there was still something wrong.

In ten minutes, he was away again, and he was in the ambulance.

James is immediately transferred to Yorkhill Children's Hospital

for further investigation.

The chest X-ray had come back and it had shown a shadow in his lung.

So they thought part of the grape had come off

and part of the grape is stuck in his lung.

James is rushed into theatre,

where it's discovered he has fluid in his lung.

It's removed under anaesthetic.

It's an anxious wait for Mum and Gran,

but eventually James is brought back to the ward.

He came out of theatre,

we were sitting, waiting.

And we just heard him crying.

And it was just a relief to hear him crying,

coming along the corridor.

The surgeon came and he went, "He's a lucky boy."

When James comes around from the surgery,

there's one person he wants to see more than anyone.

All James wanted was a drink

and his gran.

He was just screaming, "Gran, Gran, Gran."

And it was just a whole relief.

I thought, "It's finally over."

And it turns out there was a surprising reason why no-one

was able to dislodge the grape.

The reason why it happened

was his tonsils are far too big for his mouth.

And they went like that, "Look, he's a very lucky boy.

"He shouldnae be here."

I was so close to losing him.

Since his recovery, the family have become even closer.

Whey-hey!

Now he's a wee typical boy.

Like I said, all the mischief,

but he's still the most loving boy you can get,

you know what I mean?

And, um, it's just a bond we'll always have.

Just a bond we'll always have.

And they know if it wasn't for the ambulance service

and their neighbours, it could have been a very different outcome.

I've got no doubt about it, my wee boy wouldnae be here

if it wasnae for everybody who helped that day.

I've never ever acknowledged paramedics

or anything, and you don't thank the job and everything they do

until it's something very, very personal to yourself.

A great outcome for everyone today, thank goodness.

Join us next time for more Close Calls.