Shark attack survivor Lyudmila Emag speaks out about being bitten on July 4: "I felt like I was in a trap"
BAY SHORE, N.Y. - We're hearing for the first time from a shark attack on Fire Island on the Fourth of July.
She says she pried the shark away with her bare hands.
Lyudmila Emag, of Brooklyn, was cooling off in the ocean after a long beach walk on the Fourth of July on Fire Island when she felt something bite into her thigh that wouldn't let go.
"I screamed to my friends, 'Something is biting me,'" Emag said. "I felt like I was in a trap. It was holding onto me."
Emag eventually was able to pry the shark's jaw off of her leg. She says she didn't get a good look at it, but her friends described it as 4-5 feet in length. They made their way to shore, and by the time Emag arrived at South Shore University Hospital, she was in good condition and good spirits.
"She was super calm. Like, this is not what you expect from shark bites. Or bites in general. People are in a lot of pain. She didn't ask for pain medication. I think her adrenaline was still probably pretty high," said Dr. Nadia Baranchuk, an emergency doctor of South Shore University Hospital.
Ferries are how you get to Fire Island beaches, as Emag did that day; they aren't accessible by car. So the rescue went from an ATV, to a police boat, to an ambulance, to an emergency room that hadn't treated a shark bite in five years — until they saw two that same day.
"Driving into work, I didn't think I'm gonna see a shark bite. I've never seen a shark bite before. It actually was my second patient that day with a shark bite," Baranchuk said.
"I think this is on all of our minds [at] coastal hospitals now, that more and more of these reports are coming out," Sanjey Gupta, chair of emergency medicine at South Shore University Hospital said.
In fact, it was one of four shark attacks that were reported in a two-day span off the coasts of Long Island earlier this month.
Emag says though she hasn't gone back in the ocean yet, she fully plans to.