Episode 12 Close Calls: On Camera

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

I could die. This is really serious.

A split second where the outcome could go either way.

Right, call 999 now.

The difference between disaster and survival.

You could see it on the faces of the crew how life-threatening this was.

Why would you need to swim?

Apparently they're supposed to still be on a boat.

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

I thought she had died.

It's a day they'll never forget.

The day they had a close call.

Today on Close Calls...

A teacher at a school swimming lesson calls the emergency services

after one of his pupils is pulled lifeless from the water.

Medics fear the worst.

He had no pulse at that point.

He was essentially dead.

Also today, black ice on the road causes a car to lose control.

An unsuspecting woman leaving her vehicle is right in its path.

We heard an almighty bang.

As I looked out of the curtains, I saw the carnage on the road.

I ran out to see the cars all over the place.

And a group of motorcycling buddies on a day out.

Then this happens.

Luton, Bedfordshire.

Ambulance control receives a panicked 999 call from a teacher.

A young schoolboy's heart has suddenly stopped beating.

Lifeguards rush to him.

He was laying there lifeless.

You could hear the gurgling in his throat.

There was no breathing and that is when we started the CPR.

Based in Bedfordshire, the Ewingtons are a large family.

Mark and Sam have four children - three daughters and one son,

11-year-old Cade.

Cade means everything to us.

He's just a lovely, likeable little lad.

My family are my favourite thing ever.

They mean the world because, like, my mum is just amazing,

my dad is just amazing.

My sisters can be, yeah, pretty annoying,

but you still have to love them, so I guess they're amazing as well.

Unlike his father, Cade is a very active boy.

Thoroughly enjoys football, plays twice a week,

and then when the football season is over,

he switches to motocross and then rides whenever he can.

So many people would just sit in silence and play games and stuff,

but it's quite fun being outside and getting muddy.

He just puts everything into everything he does.

He is my life. I love the boy.

And it's the family's closeness that helps them pull through when Cade

is left fighting for his life.

It's June and one of Cade's teachers, Richard Kingham,

is taking the class swimming at the local leisure centre.

It was first time that that class had been swimming and they were all

extremely excited, as you can imagine.

Mr Kingham, who's probably my favourite teacher,

he's just amazing and phenomenal.

I've known Cade for six years. Cade is an extremely popular child.

His politeness always shone through, the adults just love him for that.

Sometimes I can wind him up a bit.

Tracy is one of the swimming teachers on duty that day.

We had a really big swimming group which Cade was part of,

and we had a small non-swimming group.

All the weaker swimmers stayed by the wall,

but Cade wasn't one of those,

he swam through the middle of the pool.

The last thing I remember was one of my friends,

he was complaining that he was in the bottom group

when he should've been in the top.

Lifeguard Rebecca's job is to keep an eye on the school party.

She notices Cade swim past.

I watched him go across the deep end

and then I looked back for the next child coming.

When I turned back, he was just still in the water.

He was under the water, but his arms and legs were up,

so it was like he was in a little ball.

We was looking at Cade and, is he mucking around?

Because we have seen it happen so many times -

every child wants to play dead in the pool.

Another boy is swimming past.

They shout at him to check on Cade.

I said, "Grab him, you know, pull his arm."

And there was no response from him at all.

Taking no chances, Tracy dives straight in.

Straight away I knew it was serious because of the weight of him.

He was very, very heavy and very limp.

And he just sort of like... Trying to pick up jelly,

there was just no control over it.

At the other end of the pool, teacher Richard hears the commotion.

Saw Cade lying in the water, you think the worst.

Complete shock.

Rebecca tried to pull him out but he was just so heavy

and the position in the pool, I couldn't lift him right up.

And then the schoolteacher came out of nowhere and picked him up

under the arms and helped me get him onto the side.

He was making some sounds like he was struggling to breathe.

She was doing the checks and everything and she said,

"I can't keep his airways open."

So I knelt down and I held his head back.

His face was as white as I have ever seen a human being.

I was just so thankful that the lifeguards were there.

Richard's teaching assistants quickly take the other children

outside while he phones the emergency services.

This is his 999 call.

His voice breaking with emotion, Richard is trying to keep calm.

Suddenly, Cade's condition gets worse.

He was basically laying there lifeless,

you could hear the gurgling in his throat.

And there was no breathing and that is when we started CPR.

Luton and Dunstable Hospital is only minutes from the leisure centre.

Paramedic Michael Harnell

and his colleague have just finished a job.

They're sent out again immediately,

told to expect a patient in cardiac arrest.

When you see that it's a younger person,

your pulse rate goes up significantly.

For every minute that somebody doesn't perform CPR on somebody

in cardiac arrest, the chances of survival drop by 11%.

But at the pool, lifeguard Rebecca is giving Cade CPR.

This was the first time I had to do CPR on a real person.

In staff training, we practise every month on a mannequin.

Rebecca had... Was in total control of what she was doing.

My training took over.

It is important to try and stay calm.

Obviously, someone's life is in your hands.

Quite difficult seeing someone do CPR on an 11-year-old boy

that you've known for several years.

It was very traumatic.

As the call taker issues instructions down the phone line,

she hears Cade stir.

I do remember at one point he burped and we all looked at each other

with almost a smile on the face as if something,

there was a reaction to what they were doing.

You sort of go on anything at that point, any slight reaction.

But as soon as hope grows, it fades again.

His eyes were wide open and they were just staring straight up.

He couldn't see us or anything

and then he started to go blue around the lips,

he wasn't able to respond to us in any way.

Later, paramedics reach Cade, but fear it could be too late...

He had no pulse at that point, he was essentially dead.

..and his father arrives at the pool.

A dozen faces just looked at me as if to say, "Oh, you're the dad.

"Who's going to break the news to you?"

Your whole world falls apart.

A truly terrible ordeal for Cade, his family and his teacher.

Now, close calls can take many forms, but next,

a single dramatic moment for someone who is totally unaware of what's

about to happen and isn't even sure what has happened

until after it's happened.

Well, you'll see what I mean.

Bradford, Yorkshire. A home security camera captures

the moment a car skids out of control on black ice.

The noise was so loud I thought,

"This is going to be something really bad."

A second camera reveals how bad.

A woman is sandwiched between two cars,

thrown across the bonnet, and crashes to the ground.

Was just sort of carnage,

everybody was running around like headless chickens.

It was quite a scary moment.

Helen and Jack are devoted to each other.

They met 16 years ago in the local pub

and have been inseparable ever since.

Helen, she's a loving person and she looks after me.

He just makes me laugh.

I've only to look at him and he just cracks me up.

The couple do everything together, and love going on cruises.

But there's one thing Jack leaves entirely to Helen.

We don't share cooking. Helen is the cook.

He just eats anything that I give him really, never questions it,

just eats.

Helen's sausage and mash are to die for.

Absolutely superb.

And I wouldn't say any different

because I might have to make them myself.

Helen and Jack are at the centre of a really close family.

Between them, they have three grown-up children

and two grandchildren.

Helen's 91-year-old mum also lives nearby.

She's very independent. She does a lot of cooking

and just needs a bit of help with ironing and cleaning.

Helen often provides some of that help.

And that's her plan one cold winter's day in January

when she sets off to pick up her mum

and take her for a hospital appointment.

As I was driving down to my mum's,

I just noticed that the fields were really icy.

Helen has driven this route many times before,

but today the winter road conditions are making her nervous.

She arrives safely, although

getting out of the car is a different matter.

Parked up, turned the engine off, put my feet out of the car,

tried to stand up and both feet slipped.

And I didn't realise there were so much black ice on the road.

Held on to the car, locked the car door.

Helen has parked outside a house which has a security camera.

It's recording, and captures her getting out of the car

and beginning to turn away.

Then, this happens.

As Helen steps cautiously onto the icy road and closes the door,

she turns her back to the oncoming traffic.

Another CCTV camera in the street shows an approaching car braking.

A second vehicle behind starts to brake too,

but skids on the black ice.

Out of control, it bounces off the car in front,

slamming into Helen's car

and sandwiching her between the two vehicles.

She is thrown backwards over her own car bonnet.

Anthony Durkin, who lives on the road,

is one of the first on the scene.

I heard an almighty bang, and as I looked out of my curtains,

I saw the carnage on the road.

I ran out to see the cars all over the place

and Helen sat on the floor.

Anthony rushes over to Helen.

He's amazed to find her conscious and talking.

I asked her if she was OK,

she said that she was just... a pain in the side,

which I couldn't believe.

I was just sat on the floor thinking, this is really cold.

Looked to my right and the front end was off my car.

I just couldn't believe that she wasn't, like, cut to bits.

Anthony phones the emergency services as the driver of the car

that hit Helen rushes over to comfort her.

And she was holding on to my hand and just said,

"Oh, God, please tell me you're all right."

And that's when I realised something was wrong.

I thought I'd literally slipped.

I didn't realise I'd been hit by a car.

Police and medics arrive.

Helen's taken straight to the Bradford Royal Infirmary.

On the way, she calls husband Jack who dashes over to meet her.

She was in the minor injuries department.

It was brilliant to see that she was OK.

If Helen had been shutting the door and facing the car,

it could've been completely different.

But I think because she didn't know what was going to happen,

obviously she was a little bit more relaxed.

I think that's what could've probably saved her.

With Helen's car completely written off by the accident,

it's obvious how lucky she was to escape without serious injury.

Had Helen taken a step to her right or to her left,

it could've been the end of the line.

Helen's aware just how much of a close call she had.

You have this horrendous accident which could've ended so differently.

My husband could've lost, you know, lost me,

and the children could've lost a mum, stepmum.

The grandchildren could've lost Grandma.

I was so lucky that day that I got up and just walked away from it all.

Coming up, motorists rush to the aid of a biker who's crashed into

the back of his mate at a busy junction.

On a school swimming trip in Luton,

11-year-old Cade has suddenly stopped breathing while in the pool.

His teacher has dialled 999.

Rebecca and fellow lifeguards have been trying to resuscitate Cade

for five minutes.

He wasn't able to respond to us in any way.

But then, vital help arrives.

Paramedic Michael Harnell and his colleague

know instantly that Cade's life is hanging in the balance.

We're looking at him, we're looking at his skin colour,

which was grey, he wasn't breathing for himself,

he had no pulse at that point.

He was essentially dead.

Rebecca is still performing CPR,

but the look on the paramedics' faces leaves her shaken.

That's when I started to panic a bit,

the realisation of how serious this was.

Michael urges her to keep going.

It helps us massively, so we allowed them to continue.

This leaves him free to attach a monitor to Cade

to see what's happening with his heart.

His heart was essentially quivering.

There was no organised contracting of the muscles.

The paramedics need to use the defibrillator to shock Cade's heart

and hopefully get it beating again.

Everybody paused, we delivered the first shock.

Cade convulsed, which is quite natural when you deliver a shock.

And after that, we carried on the CPR.

Cade starts showing the faintest signs of life.

His pupils were reacting sluggishly at times.

So you know that he hasn't been...

Well, there's no other term for it, dead for too long,

that you do have a chance to resuscitate this person.

But crucially, Cade's heart still isn't beating.

They must get him to hospital.

They shock him again then put him on a stretcher, still performing CPR.

Cade's teacher, Richard, is outside with the rest of his class.

When I saw them doing CPR out of the swimming centre

and onto the ambulance, that was really tough to see.

They hadn't managed to get him back.

In 25 minutes, Cade has not had one single full heartbeat.

But in the ambulance on the way to hospital,

something remarkable happens.

We noticed that his heart had come back to an organised rhythm

and we discovered he had a pulse,

which was one of the greatest feelings

I think I've ever had in my career thus far,

and that essentially we'd got him back.

A team of specialists greet Cade at the hospital's resus department.

Minutes later, his dad Mark arrives.

I just remember walking in there and just...

A dozen faces just turned to me and looked at me as if to say,

"Oh, you're the dad."

You know, "Who's going to break the news to you?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see directly into the crash room

and I could see him lying there on the table unconscious.

Your whole world falls apart.

Cade's mum, Sam, gets there shortly after.

The doctors were actually working on him at the time and I remember then,

I just stood there and looked across at Mark and said, "What's gone on?"

And then, he was...

Mark couldn't really speak.

He started to come round at some point and...

He was delusional and didn't know what was going on.

But very strong.

HE LAUGHS

He was really strong. The nurses had to hold him down.

And they were worried that... That it might do more damage.

So they sedated him.

Cade's condition stabilises, and after 24 hours,

he's slowly brought out of sedation.

And he came round, was probably about five o'clock that evening.

Mouthed, "I love you, Mum," and, yeah,

that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So lucky, so blessed that he made a full recovery.

He's a remarkable young lad.

Like, for the first day, I wasn't told, I was just saying,

"What's happened to me?" I probably was told but I couldn't really

understand it because it was a lot of words, really.

Cade is diagnosed with Long QT syndrome, a rare disorder

that causes problems with the electrical activity of the heart.

He's now on medication

and has been a fitted with an internal defibrillator.

So in the event he has another episode,

another cardiac arrest,

this defibrillator should kick in and bring him back round again.

Cade's survival is down to the swift CPR given to him by Rebecca,

her fellow lifeguards and the paramedics.

It meant oxygen still got round his body,

preventing irreparable brain and kidney damage.

I think Cade's extremely fortunate.

One in ten survive their cardiac arrest

that doesn't happen in a hospital.

And if it had happened at home, on the school playing fields,

out with his friends, he wouldn't have survived it,

because he wouldn't have had the CPR that he needed.

I was told that if it wasn't for the lifeguards' reactions,

I wouldn't be here right now, which is, like, insane.

He came to visit us a couple of weeks after the incident.

It was the best possible outcome you could ever hope for.

Defibrillators can save anyone's life

and CPR is such an amazing skill.

I think it should be taught everywhere.

An agonising time for a lovely family, but mercifully,

with a happy ending.

Now, a motorcyclist who's enjoying a day's run out with friends

but ends up having a run-in with danger.

The A41 on the Wirral. The rider of a three-wheel motorbike

pulls up sharply at a traffic light.

His friend on a motorbike behind can't stop in time.

Smashing hard into the rear of the stationary trike,

he's propelled into the air then comes crashing down onto the road.

He's not moving.

Railway engineer Stephen Foster loves trains,

but he's just discovered a new passion for a different form

of transport - learning to ride a motorbike.

The thrill, the taking the bends, taking the junctions,

taking the traffic.

It gives you a sort of buzz.

It's also a pastime Stephen can enjoy with his wife, Flo.

He discovered she was a keen motorcyclist when they began dating

two years ago.

But as Steven hadn't yet passed his test,

he decided to join a local motorbike club

to get more experience on two wheels.

At the open-air riders' meetings, he found plenty of like-minded folk.

It's a community, and we all help each other out

and talk to each other and encourage each other.

We're a community of folks that's there for each other, basically.

It really has been good for me.

It's a bright July morning and Stephen and two friends

from the motorcycle club are off on a road trip.

We were heading out to a cafe somewhere in Wales.

It was a bit of a mystery to me where this cafe was.

But experienced rider Ian Carter knows the way

and is leading the group on his trike.

Generally, if you're riding in a group, you'll stagger the bikes

so that you've actually got more braking distance.

The three bikers set off from Bromborough on the A41.

Stephen is excited about the prospect of

biking through the Welsh countryside.

I'd really been looking forward to, you know, learning a bit more about

my bike and enjoying the companionship of my pals.

Heading out of town, the group keep to a steady 30mph.

They're approaching a set of traffic lights at a major junction.

See the lights changing to amber, getting ready for red.

The other two didn't know where we were going.

I thought, well, I'll put the anchors on and come to a stop

so we don't lose them.

What happens next is captured by a dashcam

from a stationary lorry on the other side of the junction.

Steven slams straight into the back of Ian's stationary trike at 30mph.

The footage from the lorry's dashcam

shows Ian is stopping for the red light,

Stephen doesn't brake in time

and smashes hard into Ian's trike.

He flies through the air then crashes down onto the tarmac.

I hadn't got time to think,

I just ploughed into the back of him and flew over the handlebars.

So, I've basically braked for the lights,

I've come to a stop just on the white line.

Next minute, bang, I've been punted forward, like, two trike lengths

in front of the line, wondering what the hell is going on.

Ian turns to find his friend lying motionless on the road to his right.

He gets off his trike as the third biker jumps off his bike

and rushes over to Stephen. They call 999.

I don't know whether I passed out. I just thought, "Oh!"

And that was it, I was on the ground hurting.

And I didn't know what to do.

I was a bit upset, you know, I was in a right old way.

Another motorcyclist pulls over and goes to help, shortly followed by

a young woman who turns out to be an off-duty nurse.

They're joined by three more motorists.

The pain I was in was really intense and the whole of my back hurt

and I wondered what on earth I had broken.

You know, I was sure that quite a lot of bones were broken in there.

Am I going to be paralysed?

How bad is it? Am I going to be OK after this?

Will this stop me riding my bike?

The emergency services are on the scene within ten minutes

and Stephen is taken to Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead.

Extensive tests reveal he has somehow escaped

without serious injury, and eventually he's allowed home.

It's some sort of a miracle.

I was so lucky to be not worse injured than I was.

Also intact, despite Stephen smashing into his trike,

is his friendship with Ian.

We're still mates, we still get on well.

This year we're going to basically be going for a few more ride outs,

so hopefully he'll be joining us all.

He's lucky to have come off without serious injury, to say the least,

and it's been very fortunate.

The accident hasn't put Stephen off motorbiking.

Six weeks later, he passed his motorcycle test

and has now treated himself to a new bike.

The best thing I did was to get back on the bike and keep riding,

and it feels great to be back on the road again.

That's it for today.

Join me to meet more lucky survivors next time on Close Calls.