FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A student at Fort Lauderdale High School was taken to the hospital after he lost consciousness while underwater during swim practice.
Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue crews responded to the campus near Northeast Fourth Avenue and 16th Street, Friday afternoon.
Investigators said members of the school’s swim team were conducting breathing exercises underwater when the victim did not surface.
Members of the swim team jumped into action. They pulled the student out of the pool and administered CPR.
The students kept working on the victim until they got him breathing again.
7News cameras captured the teen as he arrived at a nearby hospital in an ambulance. He is expected to be OK.
FLFR Battalion Chief Stephen Gollan said the true heroes in this situation are the victim’s fellow swim team members.
“Often we look at heroes, and we think of police and firefighters, and we call them heroes, but this swim team here is true heroes,” he said. “You have a bunch of individuals that, although they do have CPR training, they don’t deal with this type of situation on a daily basis, and today, all that training came together, and they rose to the top, and they saved one of their teammates.”
Gollan said the incident illustrates the dangers of swimming alone, saying the outcome could have been different if the victim’s fellow team members had not been there to render aid.
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