‘Hero’ prevents drowning at Ramor

A dad of three living in emergency accommodation with his family has been hailed a “hero” by the mother of the teenager he saved from almost drowning at Lough Ramor last week.

Florian Caraene’s name is being put forward for a Water Safety Ireland (WSI) award later this year after he bravely entered the local lake without a second thought and swam, fully clothed, to where Dylan Donovan from Cavan Town was struggling to keep his head above water.

The incident has heightened concerns over the need for greater awareness in popular swimming spots like Virginia.

The consequences could have been devastating accepts Dylan’s mum Marilyn, who urges others, particularly young people, to be vigilant when swimming, and to understand the potential dangers beneath the surface.

“Be aware of your surroundings in the water, to know the depth. [Dylan] was new to the Virginia lake and he didn’t realise how deep it got so quickly,” she reflects.

Romanian national Florian echoes that sentiment, while suggesting that something more than sheer luck put him there that day to play a key part in the dramatic rescue last Tuesday afternoon, August 12.

Dylan, his older brother and a group of friends met in Cavan Town earlier that same day with a plan to take the bus to Lavey Lake. But a last-minute decision saw the group travel to Virginia instead where hundreds of teenagers have been socialising in good weather throughout the summer.

“We were in up to about our knees and we decided to go in a bit further,” remembers Dylan, with plans to swim out to a floating pontoon sitting invitingly around 15 metres from the shore.

Out of depth

Unaware of how quickly the lakebed dropped beneath, the Breifne College student’s strength faded, and he found himself unable to stay above the waterline. “It didn’t look that far from where we were. I thought the water wasn’t that deep, that I’d be able to make it, but then I started getting tired and could barely breathe.”

Despite considering himself a “good swimmer”, Dylan admits to being caught off guard without proper understanding of the local conditions.

Dylan’s mother, Marilyn, was back in Cavan Town about to begin a grocery shop when she responded to multiple missed calls from her daughter. The panic of not knowing what was happening was quickly followed by waves of dread.

‘Nightmare’

A mother’s worst “nightmare”, Marilyn recalls. She was only able to calm again when Dylan’s older brother confirmed he was “conscious” and awake. A paramedic then phoned to reassure her, confirming there was “no water on his lungs, that he’d be okay, and that he’d been able to walk to the ambulance himself”.

It was a “massive relief,” says Marilyn.

Florian, meanwhile, had been walking along the lake with his family. He’d just come from the dentist and was heading back to their temporary accommodation, when his young daughter Valentina’s laughter abruptly changed to cries of distress.

“She turned to me and said ‘someone is drowning’. I looked and went straight into the water. I didn’t think.”

Florian didn’t hesitate and acted only out of instinct. He swam directly to the spot where Dylan had begun to slip beneath the surface yet again.

“I held him and pulled and pulled. He was maybe halfway [between the shoreline and pontoon],” Florian tells the Celt of the exhausting swim back.

“I didn’t think of nothing. I just watched him going down. I knew what was happening,” says Florian who attended a sports school growing up in Romania. There, swimming in open water, not to mention life-saving skills, are part of the curriculum.

Today, Florian downplays his actions. In fact he shrinks under the praise lavished by a thankful Marilyn.

“I didn’t do this for anything. I did it because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t think about it, I just did it. I’m happy he’s okay.”

But for Marilyn and her family, Florian’s actions meant everything. She had been desperate to meet the man who had saved her son’s life. Now standing beside him, she fights back the tears.

She and Dylan have brought with them “small gifts”, though Marilyn is quick to say “it’s nothing in comparison to what he has done in saving Dylan.”

Thinking about what could have happened - had Florian not been there - doesn’t bear thinking about.

“We are so thankful, our whole family is,” says Marilyn. Florian’s 11 year old daughter Valentina, now proud beyond words, speaks softly when asked how she feels about her father’s instinctive heroism.

“He’s a hero isn’t he?” says Marilyn.

“Yes,” the young girl answers with a smile as broad as her father’s.

Florian’s courage is all the more remarkable given the personal challenges he’s faced of late.

A carpenter by trade who has lived and worked in Ireland for the past seven years, last June, just as his children’s summer holidays began, Florian and his family were evicted from the house they lived in.

The sudden upheaval took a severe and immediate toll on Florian’s mental health. The stress of the situation caused him to collapse, and this eventually led to a hospital admission for suicidal ideation.

Now living in emergency accommodation, Florian is emotional looking back at that difficult period, though he remains grateful for the support of his family, and for Cavan County Council, whose temporary housing arrangement has provided some stability. Although that too is set to end soon.

Despite his troubling change in circumstances - no home, no steady income - Florian remains hopeful.

“I have to be hopeful. But now the summer is nearly over, the schools are about to start. I have to think of a lot of things.”

Speaking to the Celt now down by the lakeshore, Florian sees the events that unfolded last week differently.

“Maybe I was meant to be here,” he suggests.

“Maybe it was meant to be and maybe God put me there that day. I don’t know. But I would do the same again, because a life is a life.”