“They did CPR on him for 20 minutes and then put a sheet over him… he seemed very dead.”
Five days ago, a man in his forties was pulled unconscious from “shockingly cold” water by other surfers at URBNSURF, Australia’s only commercially operating wavepool.
A statement from URBNSURF said they’d reviewed the footage which showed “the surfer collapsed while paddling out and did not the hit the wall”.
The man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition. No update since.
A surfer who was in the lineup when the incident happened says the man “didn’t make the drop on a wave and just kind of tumbled and then all I saw was him floating but that was a little bit after…it took some time for people to get to him. It was weird. They did CPR on him for twenty minutes and then put a sheet over him and we all assumed the worst. Then the news says he’s in a critical condition in hospital and that’s it. Have heard nothing since. Not even a call from Urbnsurf. Just seems very odd. He seemed very dead as awful as that sounds.
The water, even this early in winter, was “shockingly cold,”he says. “I felt like I had a heart attack when I went under.”
The worst part, he says, is not knowing what happened to the man.
“Poor guy. Wish we had some clarity. It was a pretty traumatic experience.”
Surfers were offered counselling and given credit for the value of surf sessions missed or interrupted, the credit redeemed via a promo code.