“We were meant to be here today, we were just meant to be here!” a young woman, Tara Rhattigan from Clonmore, Mullingar, told Topic on Thursday afternoon last, 10 March just a few minutes after she and her fellow beauty therapy student and friend, Kelly McDermott, had plunged into the Royal Canal at the harbour beside Piper’s Boreen, to rescue an elderly woman who was drowning.
“We never come up here,” the two girls and their friend, Shannon Geoghegan, all still in shock after the dramatic events, told us.
A Topic reporter arrived at the scene as hospital paramedics were beginning to give emergency treatment to the rescued woman on the bank of the Canal. “It was just such a nice day that we decided to come up to the Canal, and have a chat about college,” Tara Rhattigan explained, as the girls, still soaking after their unplanned “swim” were being complimented by local people on their swift actions, saving the elderly woman’s life.
The Canal incident and rescue occurred at Pipers Boreen, at Millmount Road, just across from Newlands housing estate at approximately 4.30pm. The three girls had just completed the day’s beauty therapy course in Mullingar Community College and were sitting relaxing on the canal bank, chatting, when suddenly they saw a woman go into the canal, just a little distance away from where they were sitting.
“We just happened to be sitting here and we saw the woman go into the canal. We were in complete shock. We didn’t know what to do. Then we just got up and ran. We tried to get the lifebuoy down and throw it in, but it was all tangled up, so we had no other choice but to jump in,” said Kelly.
“Luckily we could swim, we just jumped in. We didn’t think about anything else. We just wanted to get to the woman and save her. You don’t think about anything else when it happens,” explained Kelly, who lives in Clonmore.
Fortunately for the girls and for the drowning woman, there is work going on presently at the canal and the level of the water in the town area is several feet lower than it normally would be.
MIDDLE OF CANAL
However, the woman, who was in her 80s, was in the middle of the canal harbour, which was deeper than near the banks, but this didn’t deter the two brave girls.
“We just jumped in, and we managed to turn her over and lift her up. Fortunately, there was another man jogging along the canal at the time and he stopped and came over to help us and he helped lift her out. Then one or two other people saw there was something wrong and they came to help us too. If another few minutes had passed by, that poor woman would have died,” said Tara Rattigan, who along with Kelly McDermott and Shannon Geoghegan were still shaking and in shock, when Topic spoke to them minutes after their terrifying experience.
“If we had stayed on the banks of the Canal and tried to untangle the life buoy, the woman could have died too, because it took us so long to untangle it, but I don’t think she would have been capable of even catching the lifebuoy, even though we managed to get it into the water afterwards,” said Kelly.
Meanwhile, as her two friends were in the water, quick thinking Shannon Geoghegan phoned the emergency services for an ambulance, with Kelly and Tara holding the woman’s head above the water after jumping in to save her.
The ambulance service arrived quickly at the scene and gave the elderly woman the emergency treatment she required at the canal bank, wrapping her in foil, before quickly transporting her to the Midlands Regional Hospital, Mullingar.
LIFEBUOYS VANDALISED
For all those who came on the scene, and for those who heard about it afterwards, the two aspects which pleased and annoyed them most was the bravery shown by the young women in jumping in to save a life, and the fact that the lifebuoy had been interfered with and left not capable of doing what it is meant to do.
“I was up at the other end of Mullingar, at the Green Bridge, and the lifebuoy there is in a similar state, with the cord tangled up, after being dragged out of its box, “ one man told us.
“What sort of mindless vandals do this sort of thing all the time, and endanger lives?” he wondered.
“If either of the brave rescuers had got into difficulties, one of them could have drowned, and the persons who interfered with that lifebuoy would be the ones responsible,” he said.
