A 10-month old baby is lucky to be alive after she was buried under a wall of sand Saturday at the Rafferty Dam Reservoir.
Kate Johnston was knocked from the arms of her mother, Danielle, after a sand cliff collapsed on them while they were walking on the shoreline at the dam. The sand engulfed Kate, leading to a frantic search that, thanks to some good luck and a pair of Good Samaritans, had an all too rare happy ending.
In an interview with The Mercury, Danielle Johnston said she and some relatives decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather Saturday by going for a walk at Rafferty. With the temperature rising, the group chose to dip their feet in the water when a sand embankment fell on top of Danielle's head and neck area and dropped her to her knees.
"The force of the sand hitting me knocked Kate out of my hands," said Danielle who was also accompanied by her seven-year-old son. "I looked down and she was completely engulfed by the sand. I started digging and I screamed at my cousin to come and he didn't really know what happened but he saw me digging so he started digging too."
While she was frantically searching for her daughter, Johnston spotted a boat on the water and screamed for the occupants to help her in the search.
On that boat was Jeff Adams, a retired member of the Estevan Police Service who now resides at Mainprize Regional Park.
Adams and his friend, Ted Erickson, were out for a leisurely day of fishing when, in an incredible stroke of good fortune, he happened to turn his boat motor off for a second.
"As soon as I did, I could hear her screaming," Adams said. " The first thing I thought was somebody fell off the top because this place where she was, the wall goes up for 10 or 12 feet.
"We packed up our stuff and headed over there to see what happened and as soon as we got close she was screaming 'help me dig, help me dig, my baby's buried.' She was digging frantically and I just jumped out and started digging right beside her where she was digging."
Adams said he and Johnston dug down roughly one and a half feet but were finding nothing but buffalo bones. At the urging of Erickson they moved their search closer to the edge of the water, a move that was crucial.
"It turned out the baby was right under where I was kneeling. I dug about a foot and a half down, I found the top of the baby's skull. I couldn't believe how small a person it was that we were looking for."
Adams said Kate was "completely lifeless" when they pulled her from the sand but Danielle quickly sprung into action and went to work resuscitating her daughter.
"I just cleared the debris from her mouth and gave her CPR and she began to puke up a bit of sand and started to cry and it was like Hallelujah," said Johnston.
With Kate breathing again, they immediately loaded her into Adams' boat and set out for the Mainprize Park marina.
"We got into the boat and tried to keep the baby still because I was worried we maybe pulled her out of the mud too hard. But about halfway back, it was about a seven minute boat ride, and the baby started to cry. To me that was a very positive sign and that almost made me cry."
While en route to the marina, Erickson used his cell phone to get in touch with an ambulance and shortly after they arrived, Danielle and Kate were transported to the Weyburn Hospital.
Adams said it wasn't until after Kate was tucked safely away in the ambulance that he had a chance to reflect on what had just happened.
"I got back to the boat where (Erickson) was waiting and we just looked at each other and said 'man, am I pooped'. You just get drained from the anxiety and the emotion of it. I was digging like a badger for two minutes and I didn't even think about it but the emotion takes a bigger toll out of you. I just thank the Lord that I turned my motor off when I did, I would never have heard her otherwise."
Johnston said she is also counting her blessings. Not only was she thankful to Adams for his help in locating Kate, but also that her daughter is showing no ill effects from being buried.
"We would have found her eventually but it would have took a lot longer and who knows, if it had been any longer I don't even want to go there.
"The doctors tested Kate and neurologically she is all right. She didn't even skip a beat. She's perfectly fine, not a thing wrong a couple mosquito bites. If you were to see her now, you wouldn't believe this ever happened to this little girl."
Since Saturday's incident, Danielle said she has been inundated with interview requests from numerous media outlets. Although she initially didn't want the attention, Danielle said she's decided to use the spotlight to highlight a couple of the positive aspects of her situation.
"Get your CPR and if someone needs help, go to them. It's always good to get some certification with the CPR because you never know."
Adams said he would also like to remind the public to be avoid walking along the shoreline at Rafferty for the next while. The record rainfall this spring has saturated the ground throughout much of the area, making the embankments unstable and subject to collapse.
"Those walls are very dangerous," he said. "They are a popular place to go but now that the water levels are so high there really is no shoreline along there. They are very treacherous and some of those walls are 30 feet. This particular spot was about 10 feet but there is some huge walls there and you can see where the earth is coming down."
