PHIPPSBURG, Maine — Phippsburg Police Chief John Skroski said he still has trouble sleeping sometimes after the nightmarish conditions he faced one week ago.
He was cold, his eyes were stinging with the spray of salt water. Thick fog on all sides clouded his sense of direction. Skroski couldn’t see the shore and he couldn’t see the small island he had initially set out to wade toward. The stormy ocean water continued to deepen and, with each step Skroski took, waves threatened to drag him under.
It was at that point when he decided to unhitch the cord attached to his survival suit, the only thing tying him to solid ground on the mainland. He was on his own.
On Thursday, the chief recalled his crossing from Popham Beach to Fox Island one week ago today in an effort to rescue two women stranded there by the high tide. The same crossing, which appears deceptively tranquil on sunny days and during low tide, has proven deadly in the past.
“There have been several drownings between the shore and Fox Island in the past,” Skroski said. “When I was out there, I thought about my kids. I knew I had to make it. But you do reach a point where you think, ‘Did I make the right decision?’”
The women — pediatrician Elizabeth Leduc, 50, and her daughter Sarah, 18, on a visit to Maine colleges from their home in Georgia — crossed a sand bar to the island during low tide at around 11 a.m. March 11. When the tide rolled back in, the path flooded with treacherous currents.
The women dialed 911 with a cell phone, attracting responders such as Skroski, the Maine Marine Patrol and the Phippsburg Department of Fire and Rescue.
As many area residents now know from news reports published during the past week, the Leducs were successfully rescued from the island after nearly eight hours there — a time during which Elizabeth began shivering uncontrollably and became so concerned about hypothermic shock, Skroski said, she started preparing her daughter for the possibility she might not survive the ordeal.
‘Something could go wrong here’
When Skroski set out from the beach to reach the island that morning, he was accompanied by Maine Marine Patrol Officer Chris Hilton, also in a survival suit. Each man carried a bag with an additional survival suit, to be delivered to the women on the island to keep them warm.
“We were in up to our ankles, then to our knees, then to our waists, and then it got even deeper,” Skroski said.
But Hilton’s suit started leaking and he began taking on water. The frigid temperatures forced him to turn back and let Skroski press on with both bags.
Before he went back to shore, Skroski told Hilton to untie the cord from the police chief’s suit. Even though the cord was the only line connecting Skroski to land, it was also slowing him down by catching up in the rough waters and yanking on him like a dog leash, he recalled.
“I was hanging on to those extra suits and I couldn’t wipe the salt water out of my eyes,” Skroski recalled. “A wave came and swept away the suit I was carrying in my left hand. Luckily, I was able to lunge over and grab it before it drifted too far away.”
The waters continued to batter the police chief, and the unstable footing kept him off balance.
“You’d think you were ramping up on sand, but then it would suddenly drop off and you’d be treading water in that current,” he said. “When (Hilton) passed that bag off to me, I was really scared. I thought, ‘Something could go wrong here.’”
The seawater splashing in his eyes reminded him of police academy training years earlier, when instructors squirted pepper spray into the faces of aspiring officers to prepare them for an attack with the chemical.
When the crossing seemed bleakest, Skroski finally caught sight of the island through the dense fog. That vision provided the motivation he needed to keep going and trudge forward.
He pulled himself up onto the rocks. Skroski, a martial arts instructor and fitness buff with a disciplined running and weight-lifting regimen, nearly collapsed from exhaustion. It’s not hard to imagine what might have happened had someone in lesser shape tried to make the same watery crossing.
The women met him at the island’s edge, and he used their cell phone to inform police dispatchers he made it. Skroski would later learn he had spent an hour and 10 minutes in the water.
The police chief helped the two women into the two extra survival suits. Coordinating with other rescue teams from the island, Skroski learned that the rainy conditions and lack of visibility prevented a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter from approaching the site, while a Marine Patrol boat was deterred by the treacherous seas.
Maine Marine Patrol Lt. Jon Cornish told The Times Record in the aftermath of the incident that the original plan was for Skroski and the women to simply wait out the tide and cross back over to the beach when the water receded around 8 p.m.
But Skroski communicated to the mainland rescuers that they would not be able to wait that long. By about 4 p.m., Skroski recalled, he and Sarah Leduc tried to fashion a shelter in a granite crevice using sticks and sea grass, in an effort to keep Elizabeth out of the wind, rain and crashing waves.
Skroski said the elder Leduc’s condition appeared to be deteriorating, and as a doctor, she was aware that hypothermic shock could set in rapidly.
“If that happened, she knew we wouldn’t be able to get somebody out to the island fast enough to save her,” Skroski recalled. “She kept saying, ‘John, I don’t know how much longer I can make it.’ Her daughter told me she was starting to say, ‘I love you — tell your dad I love him.’”
Still using the women’s cell phone, the chief called coordinators on the mainland to say they needed to make a move. At that point, Skroski said, the fog began to part, and they were able to see a group of rescuers from the fire department and Marine Patrol in survival suits, preparing to pull a flat-bottomed boat out to the island.
The group pulled the shallow boat across, using a cord to the beach to help keep it steady and on course. They reached the island, loaded the women into the small vessel, and pulled it back to the beach again, battling similar waves and currents to those that Skroski encountered alone several hours earlier.
Two Phippsburg ambulances provided warmth for the women, Skroski and any soaked rescuers who needed the heat. The Leducs refused transport to the hospital, the chief said, but did accept an ambulance ride back to the Holiday Inn in Bath, where they were staying.
Skroski said Fire Chief Jim Totman drove their car back for them.
“It was a great team effort,” Skroski recalled, lauding the efforts of Deputy Fire Chief Andy Hart, Game Warden Doug Kulis, Maine Marine Patrol Officer Clint Thompson and firefighter Billy Totman, among others. “Everybody worked hard to make sure those women made it safely off that island.”