Toddler’s condition improves as rescuers hailed as heroes
Published: July 15, 2005
A Connecticut toddler who was swept over two waterfalls on the Sandy River was reported to be doing well in a Bangor hospital, while the camp counselors who rescued him were hailed as heroes.
Zachary Larkin, who turns 3 next Thursday, was taken off a ventilator Wednesday at Eastern Maine Medical Center, where his condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious.
Zachary was sitting on a rock dangling his feet in a pool of water at the top of Smalls Falls on Tuesday when he slipped from his mother’s hand and was carried off by the current, according to Mark Latti of the Maine Warden Service.
The boy’s father, Tyler Bailey, 30, of New London, Conn., jumped in and followed his son down the two waterfalls but could not find him until he surfaced unconscious in the bottom pool.
Two counselors trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation who happened to be at the falls with a group of boys from Cape Winnebago in Kents Hill also jumped in the water to assist once they realized what was going on, Latti said.
Tyler Warmack, 22, of Chapel Hill, N.C., started CPR on Zachary. He worked with Shavoyae Brown, 19, of Emerson, Ga., with one counselor holding the boy’s neck rigid in the event he had a spinal injury while the other pumped his chest.
The traumatized boy soon vomited water and started breathing on his own, Brown said.
In another stroke of good luck, an ambulance was passing the entrance on Route 4 en route to Rangeley and was flagged down by a witness. The remote area has no cell phone service, Latti noted.
From the ambulance, Zachary was airlifted to the Bangor hospital.
Brown, a student at Emmanuel College in Georgia, said the experience was one he will never forget.
“We were there for a reason,” he said.
Andy Lilienthal, director of Camp Winnebago, said the rescue will serve as a life lesson for campers to talk about values and service.
“They were very proud of their counselors,” Lilienthal said. “You never know how people will perform at the highest level, especially when under stress. Camp counselors are role models _ they change lives every day.”
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