CHICAGO -- A routine water rescue drill by the Chicago Fire Department's scuba team proved to be a life-saving coincidence for a man pulled out of Lake Michigan Friday morning.
"It's why we get up and go to work every morning," said firefighter Brian Otto. "Every day we're out there training, and we just happened to be at the right place at the right time this time, and we were ready for it." Otto, a scuba diver and paramedic for the Fire Department, rescued the man who was at the bottom of 4- to 5-foot-deep water near 600 N. Lake Shore Drive
The man was transported via ambulance to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and firefighters were optimistic about his condition.
"I think he's probably going to make a pretty good recovery," said ambulance Cmdr. John Roberts.
The dive team coincidentally had been conducting a drill around 9 a.m. only about 25 yards away from the man, when a man jogging on the running path informed the firefighters of "a body" he believed to be in the water, according to Cmdr. Ron Dorneker of the Air-Sea Rescue Unit.
With the water temperature at about 50 degrees and with northeast winds, Dorneker said conditions for the rescue at the Ohio Street beach "weren't easy."
He said the team picks a different location for the training every day.
"Every single day this scuba team is out there on that lakefront conducting some sort of drill, whether it's a scuba diving drill or a surface rescue drill," Dorneker said. "We understand that being out there on that lakefront every day might afford us the opportunity to effect a rescue."
"We're prepared for that, and we saw that today," Dorneker said.
Otto said they did not know whether the man, who was fully clothed, fell or jumped in the water.
"I can't really guess on how he got in there," Otto said.
He did not know how long the man had been in the water or if he was intoxicated.
Otto, who was wearing a dry suit at the time, used a rope with a "hand-cuff" knot to bring the man to the surface. He said it took about 15 to 20 seconds to do so.
"We noticed when we got him out of the water he was almost breathing on his own, but he needed assistance," Otto said.
Firefighters described the man's appearance as "shocky," or appearing to be in shock, before they worked to keep his airways open and give him oxygen, Otto said.
By the time an ambulance arrived, Roberts said the man "was breathing fine and had a good heartbeat."
But, Roberts said, the man was probably "just minutes away" from going into cardiac arrest before he was rescued.
"He was very confused, he was not able to speak," Roberts said, adding that the man was very cold and that his skin was blue.
Paramedics treated the man for hypothermia with hot packs, and the man was given fluids intravenously, he said.
Roberts said he noticed the man had not been talking, but by the time they got into the trauma room at Northwestern the man started to moan.
"It was just lucky we were there and we were able to jump in," Otto said. "We train for this all the time ... for something like this to happen and to know that, 'You know, this guy could be alive today because of what we did,' it's a good feeling."