Near-Drowning Survivor

Assistant Sheriff Mike O’Toole, Welcome, Md.

Al Masri, a captain in the Charles County Detention Center, and I were attending the Maryland Sheriff’s Association Conference and Retreat in Ocean City. It was Friday, September 9. After leaving a morning training session, we decided to go to the ocean for a couple of hours. Al, being the ex-Marine that he is, ran right into the surf, not like sissy me. I told him that I would take my time.

Before I went in, I noticed a lifeguard surrounded by a group of people on the beach. Being the suspicious cop that I am, I eavesdropped on what she was doing, which was cautioning them about the rip currents. I’ve been a swimmer all my life; I scuba dive, I’m a water-skier, and I’ve never had a fear of the water. I thought, ‘I can handle it.’ So out I went.

We were out there for twenty minutes or so in waist-deep water looking for waves to body surf. But from where I was standing, the waves were breaking further out. So I started easing my way out to them. But the rip current took us out so far that we couldn’t touch the bottom. We decided that we should think about getting back in. So we started swimming toward shore, and I was a little concerned that the water was a little deep—and I wasn’t in the best of shape.

As I was swimming, I lost touch with Al. I looked up after swimming for a couple of minutes, and not only was I was not closer, I was further out. Deep down I knew what I was supposed to: relax and go with it and the current would die out. But rather than do that, I panicked. I started to get very frantic. It wasn’t long before I was exhausted; I had no air and no energy. Al had managed to make it in, but I could hardly stay afloat. I did go down a couple of times. I tried to holler to the people on the beach for help. I thought that there was no way anyone could hear me. But Al heard me, and he swam out to me and said, ‘Give me your hand!’ But I couldn’t because I was frantic. I needed my hands to stay up. I tried to push him, and I was kicking like a wild person. Then he stared screaming for help. It got to the point when I simply said, ‘Listen, brother, I can’t make it. Take care of yourself and get back in.’ He said, ‘I’m not leaving you!’

I had given up, I guess. I thought about my family. I imagined how the sheriff would be driving home that night to tell my wife what happened. I had a talk with the Lord. And then I got angry with myself that I could let this happen. Then somewhat of a peace settled in, and then the lifeguards, Elysha Carouge and Craig Southard, showed up—or maybe they were really angels. To this day that’s how it really felt. They came in from two directions, converged on us. If it weren’t for the fact that Al came back out there to try to help me, I think that I wouldn’t have made it. He kept saying, ‘Hang on. They’re coming out here. Hang on!’

I would say that I will probably go in the ocean again, but I will be much more cautious and not out to the extent that I ventured out. I nominated Al for a valor award, which is the highest award that you can give a law enforcement officer.”

Shark Attack Survivor

Greg Worsley, Baltimore

“Last summer, I went to the Bahamas on vacation and decided to take a diving trip with sharks. It was the first time I had ever done something like that, and for some reason, I insisted on [wearing] the chainmail diving suit for the dive. So they take me out on the boat with a half dozen other people and explain that when we get to the bottom, to get on our knees and to keep our hands at our sides.

So we get down there, about fifteen or twenty feet, and kneel in a circle, and a diver in the middle starts throwing chum out. All these reef sharks start showing up. It’s pretty cool, they’re about five footers, some smaller. And they’re coming up to us and bumping into to us. At first, it was like, ‘Whoa.’ But then you relax and you just go with it.

But then all of a sudden these eight-foot bull sharks show up. They look like aircraft carriers coming in, and one of them goes in and gets some chum from the guy’s hand, and you could tell he was really aggressive. I’m watching one of them, and the other one circles around, and I lose sight of him. Suddenly, I’m looking at the one in front of me, and the other one comes up from behind and slams into my shoulder with his nose and knocks me over. I put my hands up just to catch myself, and suddenly, out of nowhere, it grabs me in its mouth from the wrist to the shoulder.

I was stunned. I had this shark’s head right in my face, and his eye rolls back white like you see on television shows, and I’m looking at his teeth, and he starts shaking my arm. But then there was a moment when everything went very calm, like it was in slow motion. Somebody told me it was like the diver’s calm before they drown. I guess I just disassociated myself with the whole thing. I remember looking at his mouth and thinking, ‘Look at all those teeth.’ And then realizing, ‘Wait, that’s your arm!’

So I pull, and I got my arm free, and when I did, that seemed to piss him off, and he grabbed it again, and this time he really yanked it, and it popped the shoulder. I felt this intense pressure on the chainmail. I thought it broke my arm. I panicked. I stood up, and when I did, one of the reef sharks came up and bit my calf. And when that happened, I bit my regulator off and sucked in a bunch of water. And then I was bleeding on my face. I was in a complete panic. I thought I was going to die because at this point I’m also drowning. It all happened instantaneously.

When I sucked the water in, the [lead] diver got him off me with a stick. Then he tried to put his regulator in my mouth, and I couldn’t get any air because my lungs were filling up with water. I was trying to get to the surface. I had blood coming out of my face, and the sharks were going nuts. They got me to the surface, and the guy in the boat pulls me out of the water and gets the water out of my lungs.

To me, it seemed like it lasted ten minutes, but the divers said it was about ten seconds. If I didn’t have the chainmail on, I would have lost an arm and leg or have been dead. I was shaking for the next forty-eight hours. They gave me my money back, paid my medical expenses, and offered me a free trip, but I think the place closed. This summer I’m thinking of doing a whale shark trip in Honduras or Mexico. They only eat plankton.”

Tornado Survivor

Emily Ferren, La Plata, Md.

“I was coming back from a library meeting, and I had stopped at the grocery store. I didn’t realize there was going to be any bad weather. It was the end of April, and it was very warm. I was the third car from the traffic light at the intersection of Routes 301 and 6, when all of a sudden it got very quiet—this dead silence. I looked in the rearview mirror, and I saw that the clouds and sky were this strange kind of green color. And I thought I could smell sulfur. All of a sudden the wind rushes through. Hard. I remember looking at the clock in my car and it said 7:12. Then I see this black funnel picking everything up in its path, and stuff was coming out of it like it couldn’t hold it all—a desk, a couch, clothes. I remember seeing all these landmarks I had known being vacuumed up.

Then my own car was picked up in the air at the same time a Mobil gas station sign was coming at my car. Had my car remained on the ground, I would have been decapitated. They say the wind was probably over 200 miles per hour. My car lifted about four feet into the air and landed about seventy feet away, under the Safeway supermarket sign. I’m not normally a real calm, sedate person, but at that moment, for some reason, I was. All my tires went flat. My head had gotten hit with a brick that came through the windshield, and I was bleeding but conscious the whole time.

I got out of my car and noticed that everything was completely quiet. The phone lines had come down. I noticed water coming out of the fire hydrants. The ambulance and police were there almost instantly. I started to walk around to see if there was anybody I could help. There were close to maybe seventy cars in the Safeway parking lot, and the wind was so strong that the paint had peeled off all the cars—everything was gray. Everything had this layer of dirt and grit.

Some people had injuries and broken bones. Those of us who could walk showed people how to get to the hospital. Ironically, the hospital was one of the few buildings left standing. Even though I work at the library, I never looked to see if it was there.

I was just in shock to see all the landmarks gone and to see everyone covered in debris. I walked home not knowing whether I had a house. As I was walking home, I noticed whole sections [of neighborhoods] gone. Without any landmarks, I wasn’t really sure where I lived anymore. My house was there, but others neighbors’ homes were damaged or gone.

Except for a few feet one way or the other, I probably wouldn’t be here today. In the two months after the experience, I really examined what I was doing. Some of the ordinary things—like paperwork—just didn’t have any meaning for me. I probably spend more time with people rather than with things now, and that’s a lasting feeling that hasn’t gone away.

It happened four years ago—April 28, 2002—and it’s had a lasting effect, helping me re-examine what life is really about. I think there must be a good reason why I survived this. There must be something left for me to do…

Lightning Strike Survivor

Don Baugh, Annapolis

“I was in a cabin on Meredith Creek in 1977 during a thunderstorm, soaking wet. As I was talking on the phone, a flash came right through the receiver into my neck. It actually threw me across the room. I was dazed, disoriented, and a little singed.

It took me several minutes to regain my composure—and when I did, the other person was still on the line. ‘Ruth, I’ve just been struck by lightning,’ I told her. ‘I’ll have to call you back.’ And she said, ‘Oh, okay,’ as if that were completely normal. But I was lucky—no one survives a full strike.

Twice I was in the proximity of lightning, although both were not direct hits. The most vivid was on an eighteen-foot sailboat in the mouth of the Little Choptank when a summer squall engulfed us, and lightning struck the mast. We knew not to touch anything metal and had rigged a makeshift lightning rod, attaching automobile jumper cables from the mast overboard to the only metal I could find on board—a metal shovel. It worked, as the lightning traveled down the mast, through the jumper cables, and burned holes in the shovel handle. It had just turned to nighttime, so the flash was blinding and the thunder deafening. Literally, we could not see or hear for a few minutes. My passenger, who is now my wife, dove under the seat, and I thought she was lost overboard as I frantically yelled and searched the small cockpit.

Getting stuck by lightning is terrifying, of course. It’s a tremendous reminder of your own mortality and the power of nature. I notice that people tend to move away from me during storms.”

Tractor Accident Survivor

Richard Bishop, Harwood, Md.

“This happened in October 2004. I had just bought a 1952 Allis Chalmers WC tractor. I went out to my workshop to start it up to see if it started easy. I had forgotten that the guy who sold it to me had told me that it jumps out of third gear, and that it felt like it was in neutral when it was in third.

I was standing with my feet together in front of the left rear tire, between it and the mover deck. I leaned over and started it, thinking that it was in neutral. The tire immediately began to spin (in third gear, the tires spin at about four to six miles per hour). It grabbed my ankles and forced me down as it drove up over top of me. It tore off all my clothes and ripped off my skin—I had three-degree burns on my back side and right shoulder.

My friend Ron Richards was in my workshop, and he heard me screaming. He tried to grab the rear tire with his hands to stop it. He was hysterical. He said, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’

I told him to jump on the tractor and turn off the key. Ron weighs 213 pounds, so it felt like a horse jumped on top of the tractor. Within a few seconds, he had it turned off, but it felt like a couple of hours. If it had gone another couple of inches more, it would have run over my head. I would have been dead—or wished I was dead. When Ron jumped off the tractor to go get help, he pulled his hamstring. He tried to run down the lane to the house, but fell down in the driveway. He limped to his truck and drove to the house and screamed for help.

Ron and I used to go to church together, but he had been out of the church for eight years. After the tractor was turned off, I asked the Lord if he was trying to tell me something, and He said, ‘No, I’m trying to tell Ron something!’ Right then, it took all of the fear away (even though I still thought I was going to die) and made me in an excellent mood. I was willing to do anything it took to get Ron back into church.

The ambulance crew said it was the most fun they’ve ever had taking someone to the hospital. We were laughing, and I was cutting up. I was so glad that I was alive and that the Lord was in the situation. When Ron came to see me in the hospital, he told me, ‘This accident has caused me to change my mind, and I’m coming back to church.’

The situation was my fault, but it turned into a situation that Ron is back and doing what he needs to be doing. And I came out of it fine.”