Out for an evening walk with his children on 13 March, training, experience and teamwork helped an off-duty lifeboat helm save a life

Brian Niland had had a busy day. After finishing work as a medical rep, he’d picked his children Sorcha (7) and Eoin (5) up from the childminder, and headed for Galway Marina to help a friend out with his boat. Job done, he took the children for a walk in the spring sunshine. Sorcha wanted to explore a grassy area near Mud Dock. And that’s where they found a woman shouting for help – and pointing at a man floating face-down in the water. An experienced helm with Galway lifeboat crew, Brian knew just what to do: grab his phone from his nearby car, call 999 and ask for the Coast Guard. But as he gave the operator the details he thought he spotted bubbles rising near the man’s face. Could he still be alive? ‘That’s when it changed for me,’ Brian recalls. ‘I shouted to a local I knew, Padraic
Murphy, to take my phone and give the details. Using his phone, I called the Lifeboat Operations Manager, Mike Swan, who I knew was working nearby. I told Mike that there was a person in the water, that I’d called the emergency services, and that I was going to enter the water. He said he was on his way.’ With the children safe in the car, Brian removed his work suit and grabbed a nearby lifering. He gave instructions to a pair of bystanders to pull him back in as soon as he had hold of the floating man. ‘I went down the steps and swam to the casualty. I got one arm around his neck to lift his head out of the water, and my other arm through the lifering. They pulled us back in very quickly and helped me get him up onto the dock.’ As Mike arrived with local fisherman Aidan Deegan, the man was no longer breathing, and had no pulse. ‘Brian had the gentleman out of the water and he was just starting to do compressions on him,’ Mike recalls. ‘I asked Aidan: “Have you done this before?” and he said he hadn’t, but he’d done a basic first aid course.’ As Mike and Aidan took over compressions, Brian dashed to the car to grab a pocket mask, used to safely give breaths during CPR. If the children
were surprised to see a soaked-through daddy rushing around in just his underpants and a T-shirt, they didn’t show it. Just across the water, Galway lifeboat crew had been paged and were preparing to launch. The Coast Guard were phoning Lifeboat Operations
Manager Mike to make arrangements – while he worked on the very casualty they were calling about. Mike asked Padraic to answer the phone. ‘They could hear me shouting 1, 2, 3, in the background and said: “Oh you must have him ashore so,” and they stood the lifeboat down,’ he says. ‘We got a rhythm going: Aidan would give 30 compressions and I’d give 30 compressions, and Brian would give him 2 inflations in-between. We were working on him for what felt like an age; it had to be close to 10 minutes.’ The fire brigade were the first service to arrive, and just as they were setting up their defibrillator, the man took a breath. The ambulance followed soon after. Thanks to Brian, Mike and Aidan’s efforts – as well as the help of Padraic and the other bystanders – the man was handed over to the paramedics in good condition. He was to make a full recovery. ‘It’s great to know that you’ve got somebody back,’ Brian says, ‘and to know that your training does count. He was lucky too though. Lucky I’d gone for a walk that evening. Lucky Sorcha had
asked to go into the area where he was in trouble. Lucky I had a phone on me.’ Both Brian and Mike credit Olivia Byrne, a public health nurse who’s been on the lifeboat crew for 15 years, for the high standard of first aid and CPR training at Galway Lifeboat Station. It was Olivia who advised Brian to keep that pocket mask in his car. She says: ‘I do put them through their paces and remind them that, on the lifeboat, you never know when you’ll need to do it. I was thrilled to hear that the training had helped the guys save a life that day.’ Such an unusual evening calls for one thing: a cup of tea at the lifeboat station. When Mike and Brian arrived, the crew had restowed all their kit and were sitting together with a brew, wondering what had become of that person in the water they’d been paged for. Our two first-aiders had a story to tell.

KNOW WHAT TO DO

Brian is an experienced and highly trained lifeboat crew member and a strong swimmer, but even he was reluctant to enter the water. He only did so after he had called the emergency services, knew Mike was on the way, and had ensured that, with bystanders’ help, he was using public rescue equipment in the safest way possible. If you see someone in the water, dial 999 or 112 and ask for the coastguard. If you have access to a lifering or something that floats, throw it to them. Please do not enter the water yourself. Too many people drown trying to save others.
Words: Mairéad Dwane
Photos: RNLI/Galway