Volunteers from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution who rescued the 25-year-old man, seen entering the river from the Black Bridge near Merkinch at 2am on Saturday, said he was lucky to be alive and could have died had he been in the water for 30 minutes longer.

He held onto a stanchion of the railway bridge — around 100 feet from the river bank — until he was rescued.

Attached to lines, RNLI crewmen Stan MacRae and Donnie MacRae waded into the waters to save the man, who was wearing only a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

The man, who has not been named, was pulled to the shoreline near Anderson Street where paramedics were waiting. Yesterday he was recovering in Raigmore Hospital from leg injuries and exposure to the cold.

He may be suffering from pneumonia and police expect him to remain in hospital for several days.

"I couldn't see him surviving another 30 minutes in there," said an RNLI spokesman. "He started to suffer from hypothermia, where the first symptom is violent shivering. That is followed by the shivers stopping and then unconsciousness. He was into the second stage when we got him and his core temperature was starting to drop.

"The water was freezing cold and very fast flowing. When the crew tried to walk out towards him they were actually struggling to walk in the fast water, which was up to their waist. It was also pitch black and they were walking over rocks."

The coastguard alerted North Kessock RNLI to the emergency. An initial attempt to reach the man using a rescue boat failed because of the shallow water and the rocky river bed.

"I am amazed how he got there," the spokesman added. "It was almost like someone had got a helicopter and put him on a pedestal, which was underwater.

"You have got to realise he had come off one bridge and gone downstream in the water to the other, but if he had carried on down he would have gone across the rocks and God knows what would have happened."

The spokesman, who has volunteered locally for five years, said it was one of the most challenging rescues he had ever participated in.

"All of us, even the guys who have been here 15 years, have not done a rescue like this before," he said. "We were all very surprised about where he was and how he got there.

"Getting him back was a real team effort," he said, adding the rescue involved all the emergency services including the police and fire service.

andrew.dixon@inverness-courier.co.uk

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---