Father And Daughter Rescued From Rip Current Off Nantucket
BOSTON (CBS) - A day of swimming off Surfside Beach in Nantucket on Tuesday became a rescue times three.
Erynn Johns, 16, captured the event on video. She was holding a selfie stick with a Go-Pro camera rolling as a rip current caught her. In the video you can see her father grabbing the selfie stick and moving his daughter toward the shore. As he gets closer, his wife starts to pull their daughter into shore. She too though battled the rip current.
"Just pure exhaustion seeing your daughter in the waves and your wife go down and not wanting to let them go down," said Derrick Johns, Erynn's father.
Good Samaritans and lifeguards rushed to help. Derrick said he was pulled further toward open ocean.
"He was pretty far out when I looked back and a couple guys ran in to try and get him," Erynn Johns said.
Owen Word is a head lifeguard at Horseneck Beach in Westport. "Probably a majority of rescues are waist to chest deep water. It can be intimating for people who have not been around the ocean to just stay calm," said Word.
He reminds swimmers to go with the rip current because eventually there will be an opening. Lifeguards said the video is a good reminder.
This summer lifeguards have pulled about 25 swimmers from rip currents at Horseneck Beach. The past few days were especially busy as it was in Nantucket where they said they saved 100 people.
After Derrick Johns helped save his daughter, he needed rescuing. He said his oxygen levels were so low, lifeguards told him he only had another 20 seconds.
"I was a Marine and did tours oversea during wartime and never had that level of fear," said Johns.
The Johns family is vacationing in Nantucket for a few weeks before returning to their home in Texas. They are hoping to find the man wearing the orange shorts in the photo above who ran into the waters and helped in the rescue efforts.
