By MICHAEL RIGLER
Star Staff Writer
DEER LAKE - Three young boys from Deer Lake narrowly escaped drowning in the icy waters of the Humber River Monday.
If it weren’t for the selfless and timely actions of two local men, this community could easily be mourning the loss of these boys today.
The three boys — T.J. Wiseman age 6, Luke Legge age 7 and Noah Gavin age 7 — were playing in a boat on the banks of the river just at the foot of the Nicholsville Bridge.
According to one witness, two other young boys were holding the boat by its mooring rope and either let go, or had the rope pulled out of their grip by the strong spring current.
One of the three boys in the boat jumped out almost immediately and made it to shore alone, but the two others panicked as the boat started to drift downstream. They dove into the ice-cold waters and were immediately carried down the river by the powerful current.
Area resident Clyde Compton was just sitting down to supper at approximately 5:30 p.m. when he got a phone call from a neighbour.
“I heard that this young fellow T.J., who we look after sometimes was in the river and I just jumped up and took off running,” Compton said. “When I got to the river I met two young boys and one of them was pretty wet and I asked him where T.J. was and he told me he was still in the water.
“I just started yelling out to him to hold on and I could hear him screaming back that there was nothing to hold on to. I had to cut back around the river a bit because they were already a fair ways downstream. I was up to my chest in water and for the life of me, I don’t know how those two little boys hung on. That water was cold and the current was strong.”
According to the provincial government’s sensors near Reidville, the water on Monday evening was approximately four degrees Celsius. Water that cold can cause instant shock, disorientation and even cardiac arrest in young and old alike. According to coast guard data, in water that cold, a healthy adult can become exhausted or fall unconsciousness in less than 30 minutes. The two boys were almost 50-feet from the shoreline and up to their neck in water when Compton reached them. They had been carried almost 500-feet downriver from where they jumped in.
Compton is still mystified at how the two boys could hold on in the frigid waters — which are in full spring spate right now — for almost 15 minutes.
“By the time I broke out of the alder bushes at the bank of the river, I met this other fellow, Chad Nichols, who was also going out to help the boys,” Compton said. “Between the two of us, we got to them. They seemed to be hanging on to the eel-grass in the water. So Chad grabbed the two of them and I took T.J. out of his
arms and we made our was to shore ... they were obviously really scared. They were screaming when we got out to them and they had us pretty scared too.”
They were met by another local resident, Desmond Ball was driving by the scene Monday and jumped out of his van to help. He made his way down to the bank and out into the water when he met Compton and Nichols wading ashore with the two young boys in their arms.
“I could see they were exhausted just from the effort of wading out in that cold water so I took one of the little boys and got him wrapped up in a sleeping bag in my van,” Ball said. “He was that cold that even with his wet clothes off, in the van with the heat on full, he was still to cold to talk when the ambulance arrived 20 minutes later.
An ambulance took the two boys to Western memorial Regional Hospital where they were treated for hypothermia before being released.
According to Harry Gavin — the father of Noah Gavin —it took over two hours to bring his son’s body temperature back to normal. He said Noah is unhurt but has complained of nightmares since the incident.
Star Photo Michael Rigler
Clyde Compton surveys the area of the Humber River where tragedy was narrowly averted. Monday evening, Compton was up to his chest in water, along with another Deer Lake resident Chad Nichols, as they waded out into the frigid, fast-moving waters of the river to save the lives of two young boys who’d jumped out of a boat near the Nicholsville Bridge.

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