Mark Oscar Tuura saved an unidentified man from drowning, New Westminster, British Columbia, October 18, 2015. A man floundered and called for help in the 50-degree Fraser River about 50 feet from a pier. Tuura, 57, stevedore, was in his parked pickup truck in a lot atop the pier when a witness alerted him to the man’s plight. Tuura, fully clothed and wearing steel-toed work boots, grabbed a coil of rope from his truck, and climbed down a 15-foot-long chain to a boat anchored in the river. Unable to find a flotation device on the boat, Tuura climbed back up the chain and ran along the pier to keep pace with the victim who was being carried downstream by the river’s current. Tuura then climbed down another chain onto a boom log, and despite being fully clothed and wearing work boots, dived into the river and swam toward the man, who was face-down. Grasping the man with one arm, Tuura side-stroked back to the anchored boom log where he supported the man, who was by then unconscious, to keep his head out of the water. Arriving firefighters tossed a rope to Tuura which Tuura looped around the man’s arms. When firefighters were unable to fully lift the man to safety, they lowered him down to Tuura, who fastened the rope he had carried with him through the man’s belt. Tuura threw the end of his rope to the firefighters above, who then used both ropes to pull the victim up to safety. The victim was taken to a hospital. Tuura declined treatment at the scene and suffered no ill effects. 87858-10060
87858 – 10060
87858-10060