Years ago I worked at a campground as a lifeguard. Over the years I became head lifeguard and trained a good team of teenagers and early 20-somethings to work with me. We often practiced safety drills and rescue scenarios because our lake could be a bit dangerous. In seven years working there I had over 200 "saves" but the huge majority of those were just distressed swimmers. This story isn't about any of them. It's about me. The camp directed decided we needed to add a floating dock to the lake. I don't know how it all came to be, but an eagle scout built the dock as his eagle scout project. The director tasked me with getting the dock installed. Installation was to look like this:Pour concrete into fifty gallon drums (not full, but pretty damn heavy)Float the dock out into place with the drums on the four corners of the dock.Attach ropes from the drums to the dock.Knock the drums off the dock.Don't die. I added that last bit. When I looked over the proposed plan, I decided it was going to be fairly dangerous and asked to delay for a day so I could go over safety precautions with my team. That wasn't an issue so we spent an idea brainstorming what could go wrong and what we would need to do if something did go wrong. After an hour or so, I felt pretty good. The next day we went out early to anchor the dock. I had myself and three others on the dock, two guards in a canoe hauling us out, and a guard on shore who just wanted to watch. I had a knife clipped onto my suit in case I needed to cut a rope. When we got the dock to position, we released the tow rope and all four of us stepped to our drums. On my count we were to push the four drums in simultaneously to prevent the dock from rocking too terribly. It's important to note that I made a serious mistake at this point. The anchor ropes for the drums were all coiled neatly beside the drums instead of cast into the water. I made three other mistakes as well- not having spare knives, not having emergency air standing by, and not practicing knocking over the drums. I didn't catch my mistakes. I counted off and all four of us shoved our drums. One girl wasn't able to push hers off. The rest of us did. Immediately the dock bobbed toward that girl, who was still shoving. The slant of the deck and her efforts helped and the drum fell into the lake. The dock sprung back. Although the disruption wasn't too bad, it was bad enough to knock most of us off the dock and into the water. What really sucked, though, was that as I was trying to stay upright on the dock, I'd inadvertently stepped into the coil of rope for my drum and taken it with me into the water. I hadn't yet surfaced when I felt the rope tighten on my leg and then a huge weight hauled me down fast. Our lake was about 25 feet deep there. I didn't go down the full 25, but was trapped somewhere in the middle on the line. My first panicked thoughts were to slide the rope off my leg, but it was way too tight for that. The dock was pulling up while the drum was pulling down and the rope was cutting into my leg. I couldn't move it. My brain caught up though and I reached for the knife on my waist. But it wasn't there. In the fall I'd lost it. No knife, no air, no hope. I thought I was screwed.At that time I was really fit and could hold my breath for nearly two minutes, but I hadn't been prepared and wasn't really at full capacity. I thought I was screwed. The water had turned into a muddy soup from all the silt at the bottom. It was so thick I couldn't see the surface, or even my leg. I started hauling on the rope as hard as I could, hoping my team would notice the dock bouncing. They didn't. But we'd been running safety drills for two years. The guards in the boat immediately did a head count and realized one person hadn't surfaced. The three guards in the water each started diving. One guard from the canoe jumped overboard to help dive while the other guard took the canoe to the shore, calling on the radio for the guard back on shore to to get the emergency air and a rescue can from the shed. For rescue can, think those hard orange buoys the lifeguards on baywatch used. We'd upgrade from soft foam to the hard cans a few years earlier.The divers weren't finding me until one, the girl who'd had trouble pushing off her drum, told everyone to grab an anchor rope and dive down following it. That did the trick. I felt a hand hit my head then grab my hair. The guy tried to haul me up by my hair, appropriately, but couldn't budge me because of the rope. Nor could he see the rope. I grabbed his hand and pulled him down then put his hand down on my leg so he could feel the coils of rope. After a moment, I felt him pull in close to me, grab my head , and then, wonderfully, pass me a rescue breath. Then he disappeared up the rope. A few moments later another guard came down the line and gave me a breath. Then another. Then another. They kept that up for the entire 3-4 minutes it took the guard in the canoe to make the trip to shore, get the emergency air, and get back to our location. Meanwhile they used the radio to call up to the camp proper and have maintenance bring us a knife in the truck as fast as possible. All in all I spent about 15 minutes underwater. But my team, using their training, saved my wet sorry ass from a dark, watery death.
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