Mark Oscar Tuura, on Oct. 18, 2015, saved an unidentified man from drowning in the Fraser River near New Westminster, B.C. A man floundered and called for help in the 50-degree water about 50 feet from a pier. Tuura, 57, stevedore, was atop the pier when a witness alerted him to the man’s plight. Fully clothed and wearing steel-toed work boots, Tuura grabbed a coil of rope from his truck, climbed down a 15-foot-long chain to a boat anchored in the river, and searched for a flotation device. Unable to fine one, Tuura climbed back up the chain and ran along the pier to keep pace with the man who was being carried downstream. Tuura then climbed down another chain onto a boom log and dove into the river. Grasping the man with one arm, Tuura side-stroked back to the boom log, where he supported the man, who was by then unconscious. Tuura assisted arriving firefighters by tying ropes around the man’s arms and belt and lifting him to the deck of the pier. He was taken to the hospital. Tuura declined treatment at the scene and was not injured.
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