Hero teens save girl
Mere months after Rocco Conaghan learnt CPR, he saved a life
If it weren’t for Rocco Conaghan completing CPR training in the last six months, a young girl rescued from drowning in a pool wouldn’t be here. The girl was saved after she was found face-down and blue by Conaghan’s friend in the Miranda Holiday Park’s hot mineral pool in Thames on Monday night.
Conaghan’s father, Dave, says that without the teenager’s quick actions the girl would have died.
“We’re very proud but it was an extremely stressful situation,” he told the Herald.
The near-drowning took place about 8pm on Monday, with police, St John ambulance, and the Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter all called to the scene.
Before they arrived, 15-year-old Conaghan worked desperately to get the girl breathing after a man plucked her out of the water.
“I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to do anything because I wasn’t sure if anyone else knew what to do — they didn’t — I saw what they were doing and knew it was wrong,” Conaghan said.
“I ran through the steps I learned at my first-aid course and started CPR because she wasn’t breathing or responsive.”
He worked alongside two women. The girl was given two breaths, 30 compressions twice, and another two breaths and 16 compressions before she regained consciousness.
The mother was screaming with worry and Conaghan found the ordeal unnerving.
A dance teacher, the Takapuna Grammar student was required to complete a child first-aid course with St John.
The course teaches the
“DRSABCD” resuscitation method, which was still fresh in his mind — but he never thought he would actually use it.
“It was my first time ever using [my training]. It was quite stressful.”
It was clear the girl was in strife when pulled out of the pool because her skin had turned blue, Conaghan said.
By the time he started going through his CPR checks, someone had already called for an ambulance and he asked someone to grab a defibrillator.
The rescuers checked the girl’s airways and got straight to work, getting the girl breathing again, so they didn’t use the defibrillator.
Conaghan was with six friends and
relaxing at the holiday park pool when one of his friends saw the girl face-down in the water.
“I would say [she was in the water for] at least two minutes,” he said.
A rescue helicopter spokesman said the crew arrived when CPR was being performed and the girl’s condition was initially critical. However, en route to Starship children’s hospital, her status improved to serious.
Miranda Holiday Park issued a message on its Facebook page yesterday, saying the young girl was recovering well.
Water Safety NZ figures show there were 69 preventable deaths in 2020, 13 fewer than the year before, when there were 82.
Dave Conaghan says his son and his friends were “calm and decisive” when it mattered most — and he was very proud.
“It puts a lot of value in first-aid courses, to tell you the truth really. It could have been a lot worse,” he said.
CPR is a manual method of pumping blood around a person’s body when the heart has stopped working.
It is not designed to restart the heart but keep blood pumping so heart and brain cells do not die due to lack of oxygen, St John says.
All potential patients should be carefully assessed to decide what emergency response is necessary, and this is where the DRSABCD method applies.