Near-drowning sparks criticisms of water rescue plans

Two volunteer firefighters dismissed

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Two volunteer firefighters with the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department were dismissed after the Memorial Day incident for assisting at the scene without awaiting the direction of those in charge.

Calvert County is surrounded by water, Joan Pollitt said, ‘‘and when you live around water shouldn’t you be prepared for a water rescue?”

The fire department and rescue squad that came to assist on Bayside Forest Beach didn’t have any flotation devices for the rescue or blankets to warm the young people who were in jeopardy after they came out of the water, she said. They need an inflatable rubber raft on the fire truck, Pollitt said.

On Memorial Day at about 6:30 p.m., a call dispatched rescuers to an overturned boat with four people in the Chesapeake Bay about a mile off shore, said Dfc. Tim Delehanty, who was the incident commander on the scene and is a member of the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department.

When Delehanty arrived on the scene, North Beach Volunteer Fire Chief Billy Freesland, who was in a dispatched rescue boat, said that he saw 10 people in the water, not four. Delehanty questioned, ‘‘How did that happen?”

Six teenagers who were on the beach saw four of their friends in the water struggling, and went into the water to help, said Donna Parks, who witnessed the event. Later, people learned that the dinghy the four were in capsized after a wave crashed into the back of the boat when they decided to turn back to shore. The boat, which was privately owned and kept on the beach, had oars but no life preservers, Parks said.

They were all about a mile out, near the crab buoys, she said.

Parks said that the community was upset because none of the rescue workers took a step into the water while the 10 were in the water.

‘‘They had no water rescue devices with them,” Parks said. It was the kids that helped save their friends and they are the heroes, Parks said, adding that they could have drowned.

Delehanty said that he told his crews not to enter the water because the people were too far out in the water for a shore rescue.

There is protocol to consider in water safety, he said, and when an emergency is a mile out, it’s a boat rescue, he said.

The six young people who went into the water from the beach compounded the problem, Delehanty said.

‘‘I understand that people want to help people in their neighborhood, but if they are not properly trained, without proper PPE (personal protection equipment) it won’t help,” he said.

Delehanty said the rescue boat from North Beach was dispatched, as was the Zodiac rescue boat from Prince Frederick Volunteer Rescue Squad.

The fire crews are not trained in water rescue, and the fire trucks do not carry personal floatation devices or blankets, Delehanty said.

‘‘Maybe we should put them on the rescue squads,” he said.

The four in the capsized boat, Travis Boucher, Cody Pollitt, Walter Radtke and his girlfriend were in the water about two hours, Parks said.

‘‘We’re just so glad they all made it. It’s the kind of event where you sit there and reflect afterward,” Parks said.

The rescue boat from North Beach picked up Cody Pollitt and Radtke, along with Curtis Pollitt and Mark Wilkerson who swam out and stayed with the two from the capsized boat, said Parks, who documented the event and collected names. The rest swam back in themselves, with Shawn Bennett assisting Travis Boucher, who was turning blue and had to be treated for hypothermia at the hospital, she said.

The man who transported Boucher and a rescue worker on a four-wheeler from the shoreline to the ambulance was then given a ticket by a deputy for driving on the beach, Parks said.

Boucher was treated for ‘‘extreme hypothermia.” Hospital staff used a warm I.V. and a special warm-air blanket and X-rayed his chest, his mother, Dorothy Richard, said.

‘‘His temperature did not even register at the hospital,” she said. ‘‘Shawn rescued Travis,” she said, not the fire department.

Other mothers who saw the incident echoed that account.

Several mothers of the teenagers involved said they were upset that the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department’s Web site stated that ‘‘land units assisted the six bystanders back to the beach while Boat 1 rescued four victims in the water.”

‘‘What they said on the Web site was a lie,” Parks said of the fire department’s posting. They all made it back to the beach themselves, and they were not even given a blanket when they got to shore, Parks said.

Delehanty admitted that other than the four who were rescued by the North Beach boat, the rest ‘‘self-evacuated out of the water.” The Web site posting was recently changed.

Several of the people from the community also criticized the volunteers for not launching the Prince Frederick rescue boat.

Safety Officer Kenneth Miller of the Prince Frederick Volunteer Rescue Squad said by the time they got to the scene with the boat the young people were all getting out of the water.

‘‘We had a limited amount of people and were late getting there,” he said. The Zodiac (a 15-foot rubber raft with a motor) went to the incident address at Bayside Forest Beach as opposed to Dares Beach, which is several hundred yards away, where the young people all came out of the water, he said. The rescue efforts were also hampered by vehicles that were parked in the way of the launch, he added.

North Beach keeps its rescue boat in the water so rescuers could get to an incident by water in 15 minutes, Miller said.

Miller said his crews are trained in basic and advanced water safety and rescue by the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute. The squad has three rescue boats available, one 27-foot fiberglass, one 15-foot Zodiac and a 10-foot flat-bottom aluminum boat, he said. The Zodiac can be launched off any beach, and it might weigh about 700 pounds with the motor so four or five volunteers can grab it off the trailer and take it to the water, he said; it’s part of the scenario training.

‘‘We handle all water rescues and emergency medical calls,” Miller said.

Two Bayside Forest residents, Shawn Bennett, who pulled Boucher out of the water, and his father Richard ‘‘Bucky” Bennett, are volunteers for Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department. They were suspended for helping with rescue efforts, Cindy Bennett said.

‘‘My son reacted as a friend, not a member of the fire department,” she said. ‘‘It’s not right to suspend them.”

If it were not for Shawn, Cindy Bennett said, Boucher would not have made it. The fire department just sat there, and they didn’t even help Bennett and Boucher when they got to the shoreline, she said.

Delehanty said that department policy states a volunteer is not allowed to go directly to the scene of a rescue, but must go to the station first.

‘‘If you are a concerned citizen of a neighborhood, you are just that, but you’re also a member of the fire department,” he said.

The policy states that volunteers are to report to the station even if an emergency is seen or if it’s in their own neighborhood, said Chief Tom Scott of Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department. Scott said that other county volunteer fire departments have the same policy.

Both Richard and Shawn Bennett were initially suspended from the fire department for 30 days, Delehanty said. They both had been warned earlier about going directly to the scenes of emergencies and not coming to the fire station, he said. The younger Bennett, who has been suspended before, was told not to go into the water that day and he disregarded instructions, Delehanty said. Everyone needs to follow the officers, roles assigned and regulations put in place, he said.

A hearing on the Memorial Day incident and the Bennetts’ suspension was held last week at the fire department’s board of directors meeting. They voted to terminate both Bennetts’ membership effective immediately, according to a letter sent to Richard Bennett.

Cathy Bennett’s sister, Jackie Galludoro, wrote a letter to Maryland Senate President Thomas V. ‘‘Mike” Miller (D-Calvert, Prince George’s) asking Miller’s assistance in the lifting of the suspension of the Bennetts. Miller responded with a letter to Coordinator of Fire⁄Rescue⁄EMD Division for Calvert County James Richardson and copied the county commissioners.

Miller’s letter briefly described the incident and then he added, ‘‘Given the Bennetts’ clear good intentions and the fact that the victim did not sustain injury, I hope the department and the county is taking every action to ensure that the investigation is completed in a fair and objective manner.”

But the Bennetts’ termination is final and it cannot be appealed.

It’s the end of the process, Scott said. The board made its decision and it’s a personnel matter and it cannot be discussed, he said.

Cathy Bennett said that her son Shawn is upset, but ‘‘he knows that he did the right thing.”