‘THEY SAVED HER LIFE’
Mum’s message for parents after tot pulled from pool
It was so fast, to go from being next to me to being blue and not breathing. So fast, so scary.
Amy Wagstaff, mother
Amy Wagstaff was reading her eldest daughter a bedtime story when, suddenly, she “got this feeling”. “I had that mother’s instinct, that it got real quiet. And normally I might yell out to [husband] Ivan, ‘Hey, can you see [youngest daughter] Emily?’
“But I just had a feeling, and I almost wonder if I subconsciously heard the splash.”
Walking out of 9-year-old Isabel’s bedroom, she looked at the door connecting their Matakana home with the pool installed just a week earlier. It was open.
“I instantly looked at the pool and saw Emily was floating on top.”
The 2-year-old, by her mother’s side 30 seconds earlier, had worked out how to open the deadlocked door. The door has since been fitted with a spring-loaded lock so secure even the couple’s older children, Isabel and 8-year-old Jackson, can’t open it.
“I’ve never moved faster in my life,” Amy says of the moment three weeks ago when she discovered Emily face down in the pool.
“I just jumped in and got her out, and I screamed as I did it. It was so fast, to go from being next to me to being blue and not breathing. So fast, so scary.”
As she passed Emily to her husband, she thought of a first aid course tutor’s words — few survive drowning.
“That was all that was going through my mind, ‘Oh my God, Emily’s going to be one of those statistics and we’re going to lose her and there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do.’”
Those statistics are heartbreaking. Seventy-eight people died in preventable drownings in New Zealand last year, up 12 on the year before and just under the fiveyear average of 79, according to Water Safety New Zealand figures.
It’ll surprise no one that under 5s, such as Emily, are especially vulnerable around water.
Seven under 5s died in preventable drownings last year, well above the three lost in 2018 and the fiveyear average of four.
“It’s just a tragic outcome,” Water Safety New Zealand chief executive Jonty Mills says of the under-5 toll.
“It takes less than a minute for a child to drown and they can drown in less than four inches [10cm] of water. Thank goodness there was a good outcome here.”
He encouraged parents to introduce kids to water early, kick-starting their water skills for life, and ensuring pools are properly fenced and latches and gates work.
Objects children can use to scale fences or reach latches should be removed and paddling pools emptied after use.
And, as hard as it is, young children need constant adult supervision around water, Mills says.
“I’m not preaching. I’m a parent, I know it’s hard to do . . . [but] the only foolproof solution is constant adult supervision around toddlers at all times . . . the potential consequences [of not doing so] can be tragic.”
If the worst occurs, when discovered quickly enough, there are things those first on the scene can do.
And, especially, things they can prepare to do.
That preparation meant Amy and Ivan Wagstaff, despite their distress, were able to start what Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter emergency doctor Jono Wills — among those who rushed to help Emily — calls the “chain of survival”.
The first link, Wills says, is simply recognising someone needs help. Sometimes, that means responding even when you’re not sure it’s needed.
“Follow your instincts. It’s better to act first.”
Next, start first aid and alert emergency services.
The Wagstaffs did both immediately, with Ivan Wagstaff using skills learned in an antenatal first aid course as Amy Wagstaff called 111 at 6.33pm.
After checking Emily’s airway for obstructions and tapping her back, he started breathing into her mouth.
“You’re processing really quickly, ‘What can you do now?’ The first thing that came to mind was, ‘Okay, do some breathing because I want to clear her throat and get her started.’”
He breathed into her mouth. Nothing happened.
He did it again. Something came out. Even better, Emily started breathing.
“I was like, ‘S***, this is working, this is the thing.’”
But although their little girl was breathing, the situation remained serious.
“I was panicking, because she might be breathing, but it wasn’t right,” Amy Wagstaff says.
“It wasn’t comfortable breathing and she wasn’t conscious, so it was very scary . . . I started thinking, ‘Even if she is breathing, has she got brain damage?’”
As she left to send the older children to neighbours and to flag down the ambulance, her husband stayed on speakerphone to 111.
“I just kept asking, ‘Is there anything else I can do?’” Ivan Wagstaff says.
“In a way, I wanted to just keep breathing for her. I don’t know how many times I breathed into her. I felt like I wanted to do it strong, hard and forever.”
A St John ambulance crew from Warkworth, 13km away, arrived, immediately followed by two Matakana Volunteer Fire Brigade crews.
This was the next link in the chain of survival.
The two ambulance officers were actually among six who would eventually arrive in Matakana from Silverdale and Warkworth to help Emily and her family.
Potential cardiac arrest callouts involve sending more than one crew, St John Northland district operations manager Andy Gummer, among those sent to help, says.
The first crew checked the toddler’s airway, breathing and circu
lation, before starting work to stabilise her, including administering oxygen and putting in an intravenous line, he says. Ivan Wagstaff watched it all. “I was trying to understand what all this terminology meant. Percentage of oxygen, heartbeat,” Ivan Wagstaff says.
“She was critical, that was the message going out.”
Out front, Amy Wagstaff was with a “big group of women” — Matakana volunteer firefighters — who’d arrived in an SUV.
Three male volunteer firefighters got there first, in the brigade’s medical vehicle, but five female volunteers — including fellow Matakana School mum Marilyn Moore — followed in Moore’s car.
As four firefighters left to set up the helipad at Matakana Pony Club, Moore and three others stayed with the Wagstaffs, Moore says.
“[When we arrived], Amy was standing at the door, drenched . . . Emily was getting medical help so the next priority was her parents and siblings.”
The older children were checked on, and Amy Wagstaff told to put on dry clothes and get clothes for both parents and Emily, before the ambulance took them to the pony club.
She hadn’t realised she was still wet, Amy Wagstaff says.
“I didn’t realise until [one woman] said, ‘You need to change.’”
Soon after, Wills and his three Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter colleagues landed.
After a handover from the St John team, Emily was taken on to Westpac 2, one of the two newly-purchased, $15 million Leonardo AW169 helicopters set up to act as the equivalent of a hospital resus bay, Wills says.
For Amy and Ivan Wagstaff it was time to say goodbye. Emily would fly to Auckland without them.
Inside Westpac 2 Wills and his colleagues, including intensive care paramedic Chris Deacon, began administering medication to stop the seizures Emily was now suffering.
The toddler was also sedated and had a breathing tube put in because, although she was breathing and had a pulse, her level of consciousness meant she needed some help, Wills says.
Their efforts were all part of stabilising Emily before take-off, the preferred option with the new, high-tech helicopter.
“The sooner you can do that the better, being able to provide these interventions at the scene means better outcomes.”
But none of this would’ve happened without the actions of others, starting with Emily’s parents, he says.
“We are one part of this really important chain of survival that occurs in the pre-hospital world.
“It starts with recognising distress, then appropriate first responder actions — first aid and alerting emergency services — and the rescue helicopter is able to provide advanced care that is brought from the [hospital] resus to the scene.”
Emily’s parents, in recognising she was in trouble and then knowing what to do, had given her a second chance.
“They saved her life. Simple as that. “My message is, learn first aid. New Zealanders need to learn first aid. We have one of the highest drowning rates in the developed world and it can happen anywhere — rivers, the sea, out on boats and in the home environment.”
As Wills and Deacon worked inside the stationary helicopter to stabilise Emily, her parents began a harrowing 40-minute road journey to Starship Hospital.
“The worst moment in my life was going to Starship not knowing,” Amy Wagstaff says.
“Everything goes through your mind. What if we never see her again? What if she’s not alive when we get there? At one time I just had this terrible feeling and I said to Ivan, ‘I can’t lose her. I don’t know what I’d do if we lose her.’”
The couple, at that stage unaware stabilising Emily on the ground was the preferred option in the new helicopter, became fixated with why
Westpac 2 was still on the ground.
A friend was told to text the moment it took off, Ivan Flagstaff says.
“We were almost to the Harbour Bridge before the text . . . and we actually beat the helicopter, [we were] in the emergency room five minutes before she was wheeled in.”
There, the couple were stunned to see about 30 people waiting to help.
“The lady who runs the PICU [paediatric intensive care unit] at Starship said, ‘We all come in, just in case, because we only know it’s critical and a child’s drowned.’”
But as treatment began, half left. “The lady said, ‘It’s not as bad as we thought, you can take heart.’”
Emily was expected to live, they were told, but would remain sedated overnight so her brain, shown in a scan to have suffered some swelling, could heal.
Still, the couple had “no idea” what to expect when sedation ended the following morning.
Immediately, they knew their little girl was back — Emily “shot up”, tried pulling the hospital tubes out and called out “Mommy”.
“It was just beautiful,” Amy Wagstaff said. “The best word ever.”
Emily, who suffered no illeffects and was home within days, likely won’t remember the day she nearly drowned.
It’s a different story for her parents. They’re talking about it because they want to thank those who helped — from the ambulance officers, volunteer firefighters, rescue helicopter crew and hospital staff to those in the community who sent messages of support, Amy Wagstaff says.
“I run a local business and even one of my competitors texted me the other day to say ‘I heard what happened and I’m really happy she’s okay.’ It’s that nice community spirit.”
They also want to warn other parents not to take for granted their pool is safe.
They were waiting for a locksmith to properly secure the door to the pool, not realising Emily had learned how to pull the deadlock and turn the door handle at the same time.
“Kids are amazing . . . we were naive to think she wasn’t watching us. The council has strict rules around pools for a reason.
“My message is, even if you think something’s secure, double-check.”
They’re also supporting Westpac’s Rescue Rashies, child-sized UPF 50+ protection rash vests which unzip to reveal CPR instructions, 1000 of which are being given away.
Entries can be made at westpac. co.nz/rescuerashie, where a CPR guide can be downloaded and a demonstration watched.
She hopes everyone will learn the skills which helped save the life of their “sweet, loving and fun” little girl, Amy Wagstaff says.
“It’s important people have that ability to know, ‘Get them out of the water, get them breathing, call 111.’
“If you didn’t know that, what would you fall back on in those moments?”
I don’t know how many times I breathed into her. I felt like I wanted to do it strong, hard and forever.
Ivan Wagstaff, father