Friday, July 17, 2009

Miracles all around

Sometimes it is hard to believe the miracles that happen all around us.
Here is the newpaper report of a miracle that happened this week in my part of the world:

Thursday July 16 2009
A TODDLER who drove his battery-powered toy truck into a river survived by clinging to it as he was swept almost eight miles downstream.
Demetrius Jones, who turned three yesterday, was rescued from swirling 10ft deep water, insisting that he wanted to get back on his "boat".
"He had told his parents that he had made his truck into a boat and rode down the river," his grandmother, said.
The baby driver had been camping with his family at Peace Island Park near his home in Forst St John, BC. He was staying in his grandmothers caravan while his parents slept in a tent.
He slipped out early in the morning to go for a ride on his red miniature Chevy Silverado. When the rest of the family awoke, they found no sign of him and sounded the alarm. Other campers said they had heard the boy driving his toy. He was wearing just a diaper and a T-shirt. Campers and friends started a search, everyone expecting the worst.
"We wouldn't go near the river because I said to my son, 'If he's in the river, he's gone', and all I could think of was, 'I'm going to be burying my grandson'," Ms Neudorf said.
The RCMP joined the hunt. But it was five men in a boat who found Demetrius, nearly three hours after he had disappeared.
Don Loewen, one of the rescuers, said: "We spotted something that looked like some rocks or an eagle."
The "rocks" were the black tyres of the overturned toy truck sticking up out of the water. "And what we thought was an eagle or something was the little boy's blond head."
The men manoeuvred their boat towards where Demetrius was kneeling in the upside-down truck. It was half-submerged and Demetrius's legs and hands were underwater.

"We started wrapping him in our floating coats and started rubbing him and rubbing him until he got warm." Police said the infant seemed oblivious to the danger he had faced. "He seemed pretty excited to be dealing with the police," Constable Jackelynn Passarell added. "I don't think he realised the gravity of what had just occurred."
Demetrius was taken to hospital and treated for the first stages of hypothermia, and released soon after. Apart from some sore muscles, he was unshaken by his experience. "It was a heck of an adventure for him but he's pretty much his old self," Ms Neudorf said.
"His trucks mean the world to him and I think that's what saved him -- he wasn't letting go of the truck for love or for money."
The truck was retrieved from the river "and still works like a charm".