Girl, Dad Rescued From Icy Water Off Provincetown
PROVINCETOWN (CBS) – A 7-year-old girl and her father were rescued from the icy waters off a pier in Provincetown after the little girl fell over the edge on Friday.
The visiting family was walking along MacMillan pier with winds gusting over 40 miles an hour, which may have caused her to lose her footing. Her father apparently jumped in to rescue her.
Cries for help were heard by employees at the nearby Whydah Pirate Museum.
WBZ-TV's Beth Germano reports.
Chris Macort, an experienced local diver, ran to help unable to see the victims at first.
"I got down on my knees and I could see underneath. I said 'oh my God there's a guy and a little girl'," he said.
The father and daughter were in choppy water desperately clinging to a rope hanging off a piling.
"The father was getting weak and the little girl was getting weak. Her boots were floating away, she was taking in water," he said. With no ladder on the pier, Macort and two others threw a life ring but it wasn't enough. "I knew in order to get the life ring to them and on them, somebody had to be in the water and I just jumped in," said Macort.
He was fully clothed with boots on when he jumped fifteen feet into the icy water to attempt the rescue. It would take some convincing, he said, for the two to let go of the rope and grab onto the ring as they were losing strength fast.
By the time he pulled them to a nearby dock to hoist them up, they were hypothermic. Provincetown resident Paul Tasha was there to help pull up the girl, but it was more difficult for the father.
"He didn't have the strength to pull himself up so I grabbed him by his belt and got him up on the dock," he said.
They huddled under blankets until the harbormaster transported them to a waiting ambulance and to Cape Cod Hospital.
The unidentified father and daughter from Somerville were treated for hypothermia and released.
Chris Macort says he believes without the efforts of rescuers they might not have made it.
"There's nothing heroic about it. Somebody is in trouble and I knew I could do it," he said.
