A DIVER who is backing The Press’s Think, Don’t Swim campaign has told how he witnessed a young soldier come within minutes of drowning after being thrown in York’s River Ouse.

Steve Fila said the squaddie only survived because he and his divers, who were working in the area at the time, managed to rescue the screaming man from the icy waters.

He said he had been working late on a project to raise a tug which had sunk in the river when a group of young men who were larking about on the opposite bank suddenly grabbed one man and threw him in the water, which was only three or four degrees centigrade.

Steve told The Press at the time of the incident, in February 1993, that the man was screaming: “Help me, help me.” He said then: “The guy was in a state of distress when we got him out. He kept saying ‘oh, lads, thanks very much. I would have drowned.’ And he would. He was wearing heavy clothes and would only have lasted another minute or so.”

Steve, who is director of technical services at Commercial Diving and Marine Services, of Appleton Roebuck, said he had also experienced several incidents in which people had drowned when, as a firefighter, he had been coxswain of the fire service’s water rescue service in York.

He said he had been asked to set up the service following the Marchioness disaster in 1989 on the Thames in London, in which 51 people on board a pleasure boat which sank were killed and in which the lack of a fire service rescue boat had been a critical factor.

Steve is one of a number of people helping York film-maker Christopher David, of Flash Frame Productions, create a hard-hitting film for our campaign, featuring a fictional dramatisation of a drowning. Steve allowed a deep-water tank at Appleton Roebuck to be used for some of the filming and has also been interviewed about his experiences of finding bodies in the river.