“I
can’t let them die!” – By William Barker
“Fifty
people watched in horror as a family of five fought for their lives in the
raging river.”
Wes Maree jammed on the brakes of his silvery-grey
Mercedes. Ahead a crowd of people and a police van blocked the narrow
Norvalspont Bridge.
“Looks like an accident,” he told his wife, June.
“Perhaps we can help.”
He stopped the car at the edge of the road and with June
and their children, Nina, 6, and Don, 5, ran on to the bridge. About 50 people
were leaning over the railing, staring at the mighty Orange River seething
below. Almost directly under the bridge, where rocks and rapids churned the
brown flood to a frenzy, a man and woman were waist-deep in the water, holding
two children above the waves. Further downstream, the water breaking repeatedly
over her head, a woman clung to a rock of the river.
The group had been in the river. For over an hour, trapped on a raised area of the
riverbed they’d been exploring by the sudden rush of water that swept downstream
when the automatic sluice gates at the Hendrick Verwoerd Dam were unexpectedly
opened.
We’re going to
stand here and watch that family drown! Thought Wes I can’t let them die! June read the thought in his eyes. “No, Wes,”
she pleaded. “You have children too.”
“I’m going in,” he said, and raced down the steep bank,
scrambling through a barbed wire fence. God,
you must help me, he prayed –and plunged into the flood.
Battling the
waves. The ice cold water took his breath away. When he started to swim, he
realized his running shoes were slowing him down. He tore them off and slung
them on to a strand of barbed wire just above the waterline. As he swam away
from the bank, the fierce current took hold. Afraid it would sweep him
downstream past the trapped group, he swam at a sharp angle upstream. It would
mean swimming much further than he had planned, but it was the only way to
reach the stranded family.
Wes had turned 40 five months before, but he still
remembered the techniques of breath control he had used playing water-polo as a
teenager. Each time his head broke clear of the water he took repeated lungfuls
of air, clamping his mouth shut before the waves broke over him again.
After five minutes he was still only a third of the way
across the river. Discouraged, he felt the beginnings of doubt. Even if I do manage to reach them, how will
I get them all back?
Suddenly, Wes was swept against the sharp edge of a huge
submerged concrete block left behind after the construction of the bridge.
Fumbling about for something to hold on to, he found a heavy steel anchor ring,
he gripped it tightly, water cascading over his back, drew himself up and
stood, knee-deep in the river.
Wes could see the group more clearly now. The man was
about 20 years old, slightly built, grim faced as he struggled to keep upright.
His arms were locked with those of a small, dark-haired woman. Between them,
her arms around the man’s neck, was a little brown-haired girl. About the same age as Nina, thought Wes. On the woman’s hip was a toddler, her
blond curls plastered down by the water.
June was watching from the bridge. I must help him, she thought, or
I’ll never see him again.
“ Hang on there.” She
hunted around for a rope, a bucket, anything she could throw to Wes to help
keep him afloat. Then she saw a yellow yachtsman’s life-jacket, bobbing on the
end of a nylon fishing line, that bystanders had earlier tried to throw to the
stranded group. if I can swing it far
enough upstream, thought June, it
might reach him. She grabbed the line and hauled it in.
Below, Wes was beginning to get his breath back. He
looked up and saw June 15 metres above him swinging the life-jacket towards
him. Good girl, he thought. With that
life-jacket I can make it.
Wes
snatched at empty air as twice the jacket swung by, tantalizing close. The
third time, June swung it out as far as she dared. He grabbed it.
After he slipped the jacket on, June used the line to
lower a rope that a newly arrived bystander had brought. Wes knotted one end to
the anchor ring in the block, the other to the life-jacket. Now he could float
free, paying himself out on the rope. He plunged back into the water.
The current soon carried him within a few metres of the
group: Martin Koekemoer, 24, his sisters Erika, 9, Valarie, 22, and her
daughter Jenecke, 3. “I’ll take the baby first,” Wes called. But as he reached
for the child, she screamed in terror and clung to the woman’s neck almost throttling
her. Wes turned instead to the older girl. “Wrap your arms around my neck,” he
said. Erika nodded, her face blue with cold. Hand over hand, Wes pulled the two
of them through the water, straining his throat muscles against the pressure of
her arms. At times he was able to stand, but the riverbed was gouged into
channels and repeatedly they plunged below the surface.
Breathing when he could, Wes kept hauling on the rope.
Through the little girl’s arms he felt the shivers that were convulsing her body.
“Just hold on and we’ll be all right,” he told her. And to himself, Hang on there. It can’t be much further now.
Reaching for another arm’s length of rope, his hand hit
the concrete. He pushed Erika up on the block. “Hold on. I’m going back for the
others.” Turning again into the flood, he began to wonder if he had the
strength.
But as Wes again neared the rest of the group on the
rock, he could see the water level dropped to Martin’s knees. The police had
finally got word to the controllers of Escom, near Johannesburg, to shut off
the sluices by remote control. “I think the three of us can make it now,”
Martin called out. “ Please help Beatrice.”
“We made it.” Wes
started downstream, trying to plot a route through the brown maelstrom between
him and Beatrice Koekemoer, Martin’s 19-year-old wife, 30 metres away. She had
stopped screaming, and her head lolled forward. She’s going, thought Wes. There’s no time. Then, buffered by rocks, he let the waves
carry him through the deeper water towards her.
Beatrice was still conscious, her hands locked around the
rock by fear and cold. Wes pried her free, put her arms around his waist, and
began to haul her upstream. “ Not far now,” he kept saying. “Just a few more
minutes.”
The water level continued to drop and upriver Martin and
Valarie, carrying Jenecke between them, had begun to wade cautiously through
the swirls and eddies towards the concrete block where Erika now stood.
Wes had been in the water for over half an hour, and the
constant battle to breathe was taking its toll. His legs trembled with the
cold, and each haul on the nylon rope brought a spasm of pain from his bruised
palms. Beatrice’s arms slipped repeatedly as he lost his footing, swam a few
strokes with one arm, then struggled to his feet again. Please God, not much longer.
As he broke clear of a wave, Wes saw that Martin and
Valerie, with their precious burden, had reached the block and wrapped in
blankets June had lowered, were calling encouragement. He heaved forward, and
with half a dozen fierce pulls on the rope, he, too, reached the block. He
pushed Beatrice to safety and then hauled himself up. June was waving to him
from the bridge. He raised his arm and grinned. We made it.
The water fell steadily and within half an hour the
drenched survivors were able to walk over the rocks to the riverbank. Where Wes
had left his shoes on the strand of barbed wire at water level. He now found
them two metres off the ground, on top of a barbed-wire fence.
Editor’s
note:In
May 1984, the South African National Water Safety Council gave Wes Maree their
Recognition Award for Bravery, and two months later, the Jaycees awarded him a
certificate for distinguished service.
Quote
of the day
“When
a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself as public property.”
--Thomas
Jefferson
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