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A first volunteer worker in New Zealand said that a local fisherman "deserved a medal" after rescuing a baby who had crawled out of his parents' oceanfront tent and into the Pacific Ocean.
On October 26, Mark Hofert of the Matata Volunteer Fire Brigade was dispatched to a campground. He jumped into a van and went to the scene with three other rescuers, including his 19-year-old medical trainee.
The radio dispatcher soon informed them that the call involved an 18-month-old baby.
"My daughter is in the back seat … all of a sudden, she has pediatric resuscitation," Hofert said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca.
When the rescuers arrived, they were relieved to hear a crying baby.
It turned out that a fisherman named Gus Hutt was heading towards the water and had noticed something. At first, he thought that it was a doll in the water. Then he realized that he was a little boy. Hutt picked up the child and brought it to the campsite owners, who woke up his sleeping parents.
"The fisherman told us that the baby was rolling in the waves," he says. "We face north on the Pacific coast, which allows you to surf monster, but we can also calm down, these small waves breaking on the beach. It was one of these days, thank God.
The baby had scratches on him, was in hypothermia and had sucked in salt water. Volunteers gave her oxygen and warmed her up before an ambulance took her to the hospital. Hofert later learned that the boy, who came from outside the city, was completely healed.
Hofert says that Hutt left as soon as he knew the baby was going to be fine. He granted an interview to a local newspaper but mostly avoided the attention of the media.
Whakatane police interviewed people at the scene but Hofert said it seemed obvious that it was an accident because the baby's footprints were visible in the sand leading from the tent to the shore.
Hofert said the parents – a young couple who were camping with their family the first time – were "fighting themselves". He and the other volunteers tried to comfort them, he said.
"I just rebadured them that he was an 18-month-old, you know how they are," he says.
Hofert, who has been volunteering for seven years, says it's good to be able to tell good news with his teammates.
"We do this because we like to help people," he says. "Sometimes we do medical things … We are mainly there to help people when they panic."
For Hutt, Hofert thinks he should have a medal. "What he did was the right thing to do and that's what people need to know," he says. "It was awesome."
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