As part of our Think, Don’t Swim campaign, JENNIFER BELL joins the team whose aim is to prevent more river tragedies.

IT is a job which is cold, wet, pressurised, involves working unsociable hours and is often harrowing. But without the speed and professionalism of the three-man team who man North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service’s York rescue boat, many more lives would be lost in the city's rivers.

As I joined firefighters Peter Barrett, Paul Burke and Tim Nixon on their patrol of the Ouse, I realised how tense and nerve-wracking their role is right from the start. Simply climbing into the full-body wetsuit is a struggle – imagine having to do it in an emergency, with pulses racing and every second vital.

The team have an astonishing amount to think about and remember; from hauling three huge containers crammed with safety gear on to the boat to running through an array of checks.

Only when this is done can they set off, with the coxswain steering and his two colleagues acting as watchmen to guide the boat along the waterways and spot anybody in the river.

Each member of the team has their own rescue tales, but the mantra is the same for all of them: a firefighter must only go into the water as a very last resort, with talking a person to dry land or throwing them a line, life raft or dinghy being the preferred option.

However, as Firefighter Barrett says, this golden rule has some room for manoeuvre. “Sometimes it’s a case of what is morally right.”

One of his most recent jobs saw him rescue a Bootham Hospital patient who had an obsession with water. When the crew found her, she was bobbing above the surface and was not prepared to come out. There were just minutes left before the icy chill of the river and the strong current would have killed her.

The only option for Firefighter Barrett was to jump in to save her. “If I hadn’t, she would not have been here now.”

Those sort of knife-edge, instinctive decisions are a way of life for the rescue team.

Even in the body suits, the crew say the bitter cold of the water still cuts into them.

“You can imagine what it’s like in the depths of winter when somebody jumps in wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans," said Firefighter Burke.

Although some river rescues are sparked by people accidentally falling into the water, genuine calls for help and suicide attempts, many are the result of drink-fuelled bravado. And it is alcohol, allied to a tendency to underestimate how dangerous the Ouse and Foss are, which leads to a tragedy becoming even more likely.

“People sit on bar balconies with their drink thinking the water looks calm and serene, but it isn’t,” said Firefighter Burke. “Once you get into that water, the icy cold sends the system into shock and even the strongest swimmer cannot cope. You panic and struggle to breathe and the current can sweep you away in moments. And this is worse when people have had a couple of drinks.”

For the crew, every job is unique and requires its own risk assessment.

York’s river-rescue hotspots include the stretches of water alongside King's and Queen's staiths, and out on the boat as it skims across the murky Ouse, it's easy to see how pitch black and frightening the waterways are. There are no streetlights covering some parts of the bank, so once the sun sets, everything is in darkness. And as the firefighters have only torches and their own sharp eyesight to rely on, it is easy to see how a person could be missed in the river, especially as the crew also have to contend with debris and negotiate their way around other boats. At one point, Firefighter Barrett points to a clump of riverside trees and said he and his colleagues would be “lucky to spot someone in there”.

Their speed is also limited during the day, when canoeists, rowing clubs, hired craft and sightseeing boats all compete for space on York’s rivers.

For all these difficulties, however, the hardest part of the job is when a body is found.

The crew must not touch it as this would contaminate evidence and hamper subsequent police investigations, so their task is to secure the body and ensure the current cannot wash it away, as well as covering it for dignity and to avoid distress to the public.

And so there is also the personal impact. Firefighter Barrett admits experience does not always prepare him and his colleagues for what they find.

“Often, once you get pulled under the river, you can be there for a couple of days or up to a month or longer,” he says.

“When the gas fills up the body and releases it up to the surface, by that time it has been affected by all sorts of things – debris, fish and other things which have left the body in a quite bad and upsetting state.”

It is a shockingly graphic illustration of the danger lurking in York's rivers.

But the dedicated men who describe it are doing so for a reason. They hope it will make the realisation dawn that the water is no playground – and help them in their quest to keep the Ouse and Foss safe.

Ouse & Foss tragedies

York’s river tragedies in recent times include:

• July 2011: Richard Horrocks, 21, from the Haxby Road area, who drowned after jumping into the Ouse from the balcony of a riverside bar where he worked

• March 2011: Paul Alan Rogerson, 26, of Arthur Street, who drowned after falling from Ouse Bridge at 2am

• March 2011: Lee Calam, 35, of South Bank, whose body was found in the Ouse more than a week after he disappeared

• April 2010: Mandy Bishop, 34, of Bishopgate Street, whose body was found in the Ouse just over a week after she was reported missing

• March 2010: Jonathan Havron, 18, pictured, of Huntington, whose body was found in the Foss about a fortnight after he went missing at the end of a night out.