The emergency services have been notified of a drowning accident at Transjøen, the Eastern police district wrote on Twitter on Saturday afternoon.
A few minutes later:
“The woman was rescued ashore by an observant person. CPR was started on site. »
The “observant person” is the profiled ex-mayor of the Gardermoen municipality of Ullensaker, Harald Espelund (72).
The term “in the right place at the right time” takes on an exact meaning.
Another exact factor: Knowledge of first aid and lifesaving plus experience with crisis situations.
The woman is awake and driven to Ahus by ambulance. The woman was rescued ashore by an observant person. CPR was started on site.
– Police in the East (@politietost) July 17, 2021
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Eidsvoll Ullensaker Blad recognized and first told about the former mayor’s role in the drama just before 4pm on Saturday.
In the photo of the newspaper’s photographer, it is Espelund standing in swimming trunks with a mobile phone at the back. He calls the husband of the woman who was dying. The man is on holiday in Trøndelag.
In front of the picture is Espelund’s wife Helen Melby Espelund (72) talking to the rescue crew.
The couple Espelund and a family friend, a woman (70) from Jessheim, were the three on the dramatic and almost fateful swim in Transjøen, a kilometer away from the Espelund family’s farm in Mogreina.
THE TRANSJØEN IN ULLENSAKER: Here was a woman close to losing her life on a swim on Saturday. Photo: Fredrik Hagen / Dagbladet.
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– The conclusion first: How did it go with the woman who was rescued from the water?
– I talked to her for a long time on the phone on Sunday morning. She was cheerful and optimistic as usual. This means that it has gone well, says Harald Espelund to Dagbladet around the day Sunday.
Lungs full of water
– What happened there in the water?
– Neither she nor we know for sure. But she was at least unconscious with her body and head under water, and with her lungs full of water, says the cowboy, the FRP politician and not least the former employee in the Armed Forces.
Espelund elaborates on the Armed Forces:
Without 10 years there as a trained officer, knowledge of lifesaving and experience with critical situations, it is not entirely certain that this would have gone so well.
And he adds his son’s comment:
– We were lucky too.
– I had planned to drive up to the farm again and help him take in the dairy cows at 4 pm exactly, as he usually does. Then an acquaintance came by to help him with that. Then I stayed by the water with my wife and friend, swam the hundred meters over to the other side first, and was on my way back when they started swimming towards me.
– Disappeared
The friend shouted that it was wonderful bathing water, at least 22 degrees.
– She was 6-8 meters from land, I was 10-15 meters from her when suddenly there was something strange with the swimming movements and she changed direction towards a murky reed area. Then she disappeared. I will not forget that facial expression when I got her head over, Espelund says the next day.
GARDERMOEN 2014: Israeli President Shimon Peres is welcomed to Gardermoen’s host municipality Ullensaker by Mayor Harald Espelund. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTB.
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His new experience after several crisis situations both in the Armed Forces, as mayor and at home on the farm, is how leaden it is to move an unconscious person in water.
– She must have been without air for four to five minutes. I massaged my back and chest, as I have learned. Pretty soon, water jets came out of her mouth, Espelund explains.
– Could it have gone wrong? Yes
And adds something else he learned on Saturday:
– Always have a mobile phone nearby. I had left it at home. My wife made sure she did not slip into the water again while I was driving home to call 113. Rescuers and an ambulance were there within minutes, impressive.
– Could this have gone wrong if you had been 50 meters away in the water instead of 10-15?
– Yes.
MEET HAAKON: Crown Prince Haakon, then-rapporteur Harald Espelund and state administrator Valgerd Svarstad Haugland in 2014. Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB.
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– It has been quiet around Harald Espelund nationally since you were mayor of Ullensaker from 2003 to 2015 and deputy representative to the Storting. What are you doing these days?
– I am a member of the Ullensaker municipal council for the 42nd year, chair the municipality’s control committee and hold positions in the Nordic Association and the organization for defense veterans in Upper Romerike. And then I help a little on the farm from time to time.
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