Framingham firefighter Edward Lill knows he has to be ready at a moment's
notice to respond to any emergency when he's at work.
But yesterday morning, he and his two friends, Michael Guerrieri and
Ken Moscatelli, were fishing near the Elizabeth Islands at Martha's
Vineyard when they were called to action to save four men whose boat
had sunk.
"Everything happened so quick and so smooth," said Lill,
a 21-year veteran of the department. "I can feel good about it.
The three of us kept level heads. We were under control. We didn't panic."
At about 8 a.m., Lill of Ashland, with Guerrieri of Bourne and Moscatelli
of Sagamore, were fishing for stripers on Lill's 21-foot Carolina Skip,
the Three Amigos.
Because of large 2- to 4-foot waves, the men fished with the engine
off.
In the distance, about 75 yards away, Lill said he saw a man waving
his hands "frantically" while another bailed out a 20-foot
Wellcraft.
"You could see they were distressed," said Lill. "Before
we could say another word, the boat began to sink. We began to head
over there, and within 30 seconds, their boat was completely sunk. It
was gone."
When Lill and his friends neared where the boat had been, they found
four men clinging to a 100-quart cooler in the cold and rough seas.
Guerrieri threw a rope to the men, and they pulled all of them to
the side of the boat, Lill said.
That, Lill said, is when it became tricky. His boat isn't meant to
hold seven people.
"There were three of us on the boat, and four of them on the
side," Lill said. "They were out there, and they were so tired.
They were only there for three or four minutes, and they were exhausted.
You could see symptoms of hypothermia were setting in. They weren't
in shock, but they were on their way.
"We took them up one at a time," continued Lill. "We
instructed them to get on the other side of the boat so it wouldn't
capsize. When we got the last one in, he was completely exhausted. He
even said he couldn't move, we had to help him up."
The three friends brought the other men to the Coast Guard station
in Woods Hole. The rescued men's boat had been hit by two large waves,
which caused it to sink, Lill said.
A spokesman for the Coast Guard said he had no information about the
rescue except to confirm it had happened. The state Environmental Police
are handling the investigation, and they could not be reached for comment.
Although he deals with emergency situations on a daily basis, Lill
said yesterday's incident was different than the ones he usually sees.
"When you get called for a medical or a heart attack, it has
already happened - you don't see it," said Lill. "I saw this
happen."
It was lucky for the four men that he and his friends did see the
boat sink, Lill said. Several other boats closer than them did not.
"We weren't even the closest boat," said Lill. "(The
rescued men) didn't even know we were there, they weren't facing us.
We were a good 50 to 75 yards away. There were other boats that were
closer, but if you weren't facing the right way, you wouldn't even notice
if they were there. With the wind kicked up like that and the waves,
it's hard to hear a distress call."
This wasn't the first time Lill was involved in an ocean rescue. Two
years ago, he and Moscatelli rescued a couple in Sandwich while they
kayaked in Scorten Creek, which flows into the ocean.
"The woman flipped her kayak, and she couldn't get upright,"
said Lill. "Her husband had dove in to help, but they got caught
in a rip tide, and pulled out. We plucked them out of the water."
After the three friends left Woods Hole yesterday, they headed out
to fish for more stripers, but it wasn't the same.
"We went back out, but we didn't fish as hard as before,"
Lill said. "The people we rescued, the cooler they were holding
onto had three keeper stripers. It was a very good day.