The 16-year-old boy who last Friday plunged into the new bathroom space of The Valleseco Block, He did it without knowing how to swim and without even being able to imagine that this ignorance almost cost him his life. Something that did not happen thanks to a chain of events that avoided the worst outcome.
And it is that from the lifeguard service, going through the two local police who rescued him and began resuscitation maneuvers, to the doctor at the health center where two other agents went to look for him to help in his recovery, and finally the staff of the Canary Islands Emergency Service (SUC)who managed to fully bring him back and stabilize him, formed a gear in which each piece became essential for this young man to continue breathing today, in the hospital, but alive.
The story of this rescue began on Friday June 16 at four in the afternoon. There, a Santa Cruz Local Police patrol carried out a surveillance tour of the new Valleseco bathing area, a space that they have recently incorporated into their patrol functions on the chicharrero coast. During this service, the agents detected several users who were running towards a specific point on the coast, a place to which they also rushed. At that moment, a minor was pulled out of the water, unconscious and not responding to any stimulus.
The Spanish Red Cross crew, which has been incorporated into this new enclave to carry out rescue and first-aid work since its opening, joined the police and immediately, among themselves, cardiopulmonary resuscitation work began.
Meanwhile, the Emergency and Security Coordination Center (Cecoes) 1-1-2 of the Government of the Canary Islands was alerted, which was requested a resource for medical transport and support, detailing the situation in which the minor was found and the resuscitation maneuvers that were being carried out.
Another police patrol, who had come to the aid of his colleagues, went to a nearby health center to seek the collaboration of an emergency doctor, who also joined the work team that was trying to bring the young man back to life.
Agents and lifeguards, in the secured area to be able to provide assistance to this boy, who as confirmed by the Local Police, is of Chinese nationality, continued resuscitation maneuvers, a situation in which they even tried to use the semiautomatic defibrillator (DESA ) available to some police vehicles, although circumstances ruled out its use. After 35 minutes of resuscitation, everyone’s efforts paid off and the boy’s vital signs were stabilized.
Quickly, the medical transport resource mobilized for this service transferred the young man to the Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria University Hospital (Hunsc), where he was admitted to the pediatric emergency unit.
The circumstance occurs that, in the company of the young protagonist of this sad event, was his younger brother, only eight years old, and, like the affected person, he did not know how to swim either. As the Local Police could verify, they were in the bathing area without their parents being aware of it and without any other company.
The agents took charge of the eight-year-old boy, with the aim of locating the family, also Chinese citizens, to notify all the circumstances that occurred around their two children, handing them over the youngest.
The work of these two agents also led them to seek the collaboration of a nearby establishment to be able to understand the boy’s family in their language, since they did not speak Spanish. Once at the family home, the police officers offered to take the young man’s father to the La Candelaria facilities so that he could meet with his son.
