Instinctive Courage

 

"I shouted, 'Anybody here? Get out! Get out! Fire!

"I ran inside and looked under beds and closets, but I couldn't find her. But when I got to the stairs that led downstairs, I heard some faint crying."

"I rolled her up in my arm like a football, then felt my way back up the stairs. It was extremely hot and smoky, and it was painful to breathe."

"The only light I could see was coming from the rooms upstairs. So I headed up there."

Nicholas Bostic, passerby, Lafayette, Indiana

 

"His selflessness during this incident is inspiring."

"What he doesn't understand is his actions weren't ordinary, they were extraordinary."

"He went down those stairs to save that little girl when he thought it was impossible just moments before. He knew he was risking his life."

"There's only one way to define that; courageous and heroic."

Lt. Randy Sherer, Lafayette Police Department

The Barrett family, of Lafayette, Indiana, whose children were rescued from a house fire by passerby Nick Bostic  | Credit: Go Fund Me

 

Some people are imbued with that level of heroism, to react to emergency events instinctively and with determination to help extract others from dangerous, life-threatening situations. He did calculate his risk, knowing that he was submitting himself through his efforts to rescue a group of children, to the very danger he was anxious to prevent them from suffering. Nevertheless, he pushed on, knowing he must. Perhaps a fleeting argument passed through his mind that he had to live with himself.

A man who works for a pizza establishment, it was not any training as a first-responder that propelled him to action, but rather an inborn sense of responsibility to others drew him to commit himself to a dangerous venture. He was simply the proverbial right man at the right time in the right place to save the lives of five people ranging in age from an infant to an 18-year-old minding her younger siblings in their parents' temporary absence.

The young man, 25, a mere seven years older than the oldest person he led to safety from a raging house fire, was on a mundane mission; he was driving to fill up his vehicle at a gas station at the midnight hour. Then as he passed a two-storey house in Lafayette, Indiana, he realized there were flames licking the front of the house. He braked, turned around and drove into the driveway.

 

Nick Bostic endangered his life to save four children and their 18-year-old sister from fire (Nick Bostic/Facebook and GoFundMe)

 

He had forgotten his cellphone at home and was unable to dial 911. When he attempted to alert another driver he met with no success. Seeing and hearing nothing from the house he ran around to the back, found a door unlocked and rushed in, to be met with thick smoke. He spoke afterward of stinging eyes and nostrils. When he called out whether anyone was there, hoping to establish whether the house was occupied, there was silence, and he turned to leave.

As he did a teenager appeared at the top of the stairs and with her were three young children. The teen was 18, babysitting that July 10 for their absent parents, the three young children her siblings, along with another teen who was a family friend. The family's parents were out for a night of social relaxation. Selonna Barrett had been frantically waking up her charges after smelling smoke. Nicholas Bostic took charge of the situation, ushering everyone out of the house.

Then Selonna informed her rescuer that six-year-old Kaylani remained in the house. The staircase leading downstairs where he heard the crying when he re-entered the burning house was dense with smoke, the heat unbearable. He hesitated for a split second and then plunged down the stairs to search for the child. "I thought, 'I don't want to die here'" he recounted later. Holding his breath he followed the crying voice through complete darkness.

When he reached the child he scooped her into his arms hoping to return the same way he entered. But he was now upstairs and the staircase was suffused with thick smoke and nothing could be seen through the dark haze. He used his right fist to smash a window, wrapped the child next to his left side and leaped the two stories to the ground below.He fell onto his right side, the little girl was cushioned on his left side, by his body.

All of this took 15 minutes. And the  young man's quick thinking saved five lives. Selonna had called her parents and they rushed back home, arriving to discover their home aflame and the six-year-old  with minor injuries being treated by paramedics. Nicholas was sent by ambulance to hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation along with first-degree burns on his buttocks, right ankle and right arm. A neighbour had called 911, spurring firefighters' arrival.

Nick Bostic, center, and girlfriend Kara Lewis, left, with the Barrett family, whose children he saved from a house fire      Credit: Facebook

Righteous Among The Nations

"In order to perpetrate the murder of six million Jews it was necessary to enlist the cooperation of different state institutions. Many of those involved were, so they claimed, professionals merely doing their job. Only a small minority mustered the necessary courage and honesty to recognize the real significance of what they were doing or what they were required to do and decided to defy their superiors and their orders and instructions."
"The Righteous Among the Nations, honored by Yad Vashem, are non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed."
Yad Vashem, Israel  --  World Holocaust Remembrance Center

Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations

He was a young man of high principles, a man like few others, who was moved by the deathly plight he saw before him, in the country to which he had been dispatched as a diplomat to join the Swedish foreign mission in Hungary, 75 years ago. He came of a patrician family whose sense of right and wrong was acute, so much so, that despite the personal danger to himself, he acted compassionately and with determination to save as many Jewish lives as he could.

Raoul Wallenberg, European Pressphoto Agency

"I want specific answers [of the Russians] to specific questions."
"He was a great man who wasn’t afraid to do the impossible. He deserves for us to know what happened to him."
"His story is unfinished — the mystery must be resolved. There are still so many closed doors, and we must have help in opening them.”
Wallenberg’s niece Marie von Dardel-Dupuy

On January 17, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg disappeared. A Swedish diplomat during World War II, barely into his 30s, when he arrived at the Swedish legation in Budapest in July of 1944, 440,000 Hungaran Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz during a frenetically disastrous period of ten weeks' duration. Raoul Wallenberg put into motion his personal dedication to saving the lives of Jews, slated for annihilation by the Nazi machinery of European Jewry's extermination.

During the last six months of that year, he distributed schutzpasses -- diplomatic passports whose possession was priceless for desperate Jews. It conferred upon each individual holding that precious document immunity protecting them from the fate that befell hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews, slated for death because they were Jews, their existence offensive to the hierarchy of the Third Reich whose propaganda had dehumanized them, enabling their arrest, deportation to death camps and final annihilation.

By means of establishing safe houses, giving diplomatic sanctuary to passport holders, this heroic figure saved the lives of 50,000 Jews. He rendered diplomatic immunity, protection from arrest, deportation to death camps and finally death to people with no prospects for salvation from the deadly grasp of a precision death machine like none other. Raoul Wallenberg embodied courage, conviction and compassion to the very depth of  his noble soul.

When the Nazis advanced on Hungary's capital Budapest, threatening to blow up the city's ghetto and along with it the remaining Jews within it, he immediately placed the German generals on notice that he would see to it that they would be held accountable and justice would eventually prevail when they would be sentenced and convicted on charges of war crimes. At this time, Germany had already suffered grievous losses in their war of conquest, starting with their disastrous loss in the invasion of Soviet Russia.

German cities were being fire-bombed, food was becoming scarce, the German population, themselves steeped in Nazi ideology and complicit in the fate of Europe's Jews, began to question the reliability of the propaganda fed to them by their government, began to suspect that things were not as they were told, on the war front. Those Nazi generals may have suspected themselves that plans were going awry and there was potential for a final, complete loss and surrender. At which time they would be held liable for their crimes against humanity, a term not yet envisioned until the Nuremberg trials.

Raoul Wallenberg (Wikimedia Commons)

But the threat worked and the generals stood down and in the process another 70,000 Jews were rescued from certain death. When the Soviets entered Hungary to liberate it from the Germans on January 17, 1945, for reasons known only to themselves and never shared with the rest of the world, despite efforts to find and free Raoul Wallenberg, he was arrested that day, and taken to Russia where he was imprisoned in the Gulag.

Under questioning, Soviet authorities contended he had died in 1947 of a heart attack, then that he had been murdered, when in fact, reports of others having seen and spoken with him surfaced, negating those responses. In 1985, a U.S. Federal Court found evidence they considered "incontrovertible" that Raoul Wallenberg was alive in 1947, "compelling" that he was alive in the 1960s, and "credible" that he remained alive into the 1980s.

To this day, however, the mystery of what had become of this singular man remains unknown. In 1989, his passport, personal belongings and a copy of a prisoner record card were turned over to the family.

Escaping Death, Quietly Settling in to Havens

"The White Helmets are 3,922 volunteer search and rescue workers from local communities who risk their lives to save others and bring hope."

"We rush to the scene of attacks to save the greatest number of lives in the shortest possible time and to minimize further injury to people and damage to property."
"We are a neutral and impartial organization. We do not pledge allegiance to any political party or group. We serve all the people of Syria – we are from the people and we are for the people."
Syrian Civil Defence  [White Helmets]

In this Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016, file photo, provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, rescue workers work the site of airstrikes in the al-Sakhour neighborhood of the rebel-held part of eastern Aleppo, Syria. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via The Associated Press)

Since their formation in 2013 as a non-political rescue group the White Helmets estimate they have been able to rescue up to 100,000 Syrian men, women and children in dire straits, victims of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's all-out war against his civilian Sunni Syrian population. To ordinary Syrians they are heroes, risking their own lives to secure those of strangers. Their exploits have become common knowledge. They too have been targeted by the Syrian regime for extermination, just as hospitals and clinics, breadlines and schools have been deliberate targets in the Sunni-majority areas of Syria.

Still grab from video: President Benjamin Netanyahu announcing the rescue by the Israel Defence Forces of a group of 400 White Helmet Families, bused from the Golan Heights into Jordan

Hundreds of White Helmets and their families were trapped by the advancing forces of the Syrian military. Their fate was obvious, as the Syrian military advanced they would target the White Helmets for death. The group recognized as  heroic by the West and by those whose lives they saved are considered to be 'terrorists' by President Bashar al-Assad whose agenda has been their extermination. And as far as Assad's ally Vladimir Putin is concerned, if the Syrian president considers them enemies and terrorists it's good enough assurance that's what they represent for the Kremlin to order air strikes on their positions.

An appeal went out to the Israeli cabinet to help rescue the trapped White Helmets. In response, the IDF was given orders by President Benjamin Netanyahu to spirit them by bus over the border into Jordan, where they would be safe. Germany, Britain and Canada had committed to absorbing the hundreds of White Helmets and their families escaping the fate that Assad had already visited over the years on hundreds of thousands of Syrians whom he regards as scum, labelling them terrorists for defying his authority. When in fact their work as firefighters, paramedics, in rescue and recovery, has earned them a place of honour and distinction in the historical record.



Though the July rescue was a success it was only a partial success; of the 900 members of the White Helmets trapped within Syria’s southern Daraa and Quneitra provinces only half that number was able to escape, the remainder consisting of a majority of the Civil Defence teams and their families remained trapped as the Russian and Syrian forces moved in too quickly to enable their rescue. Those rescued then spent three months in the Azraq refugee camp which holds an estimated 40,000 Syrian refugees awaiting resettlement.

Members of the White Helmets and their families are escorted onto a bus just past the Syria-Israel border after a harrowing rescue mission.

In August a ceasefire agreement took place permitting civilians and fighters who agreed to surrender their weapons to leave Daraa and buses took them to the province of Idlib in the northwest. Buses then took the remaining White Helmets to the last major rebel stronghold in Syria. "We believe that for them, maybe they’re not 100-per-cent safe from the war in Idlib, but they are in a place where the regime and the Russians can’t kill them. They are continuing their work, working with the White Helmets centres in Idlib", explained Raed Saleh, the head of the White Helmets.

Canada has now taken in, aside from the 40,000 Syrians that have been absorbed as refugees, their share of the White Helmet families, their exact numbers not yet disclosed. Mr. Saleh, speaking for the group he represents and for the Sunni majority Syrians whose millions of lives were shattered as they fled the violence, that neither Canada nor other Western countries should take part in the reconstruction of Syria until a political solution removing Assad from power takes place. "Assad committed war crimes. How can countries like Canada have relations with such a regime?"

Presumably, the thousands of White Helmets remaining in the northwest of Syria to continue their rescue work have the option to remain in the hope that Syria can eventually be reconstructed with its tyrant removed. If so, Russia, committed to the Assad regime's survival, remains to be convinced and that doesn't appear likely. For the time being the Civil Defence families that made it out of Syria are being screened and resettled in France, Argentina, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.

"They not only helped rescue people who were caught in the conflict, they also collected evidence of war crimes, and that is why they were threatened directly by the Assad regime. Canada was called upon by the international community directly to respond. It wasn't just us, it was a collection of countries -- and we responded immediately."

"They performed an amazing and brave service on behalf of humanity in the civil war in Syria. It was a tough mission, it was a tough ask, but we delivered because we felt that White Helmets had done an exceptional service for humanity and we needed to be there to help them in their time of need."

Canadian Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen

Add caption

The White Helmets Rescued: Thank You, Israel

"Several days ago, U.S. President Trump contacted me, as did Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and others, and requested that we assist in evacuating hundreds of White Helmets from Syria."
"These are people who have saved lives and whose lives were in danger. Therefore, I approved their passage through Israel to additional countries as an important humanitarian gesture."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

White Helmet volunteers in Syria carry children out of bombed danger zones. Syria accuses the White Helmets of 'terrorism'. Photo: Sultan Kitaz, Reuters

And nor has this been the sole humanitarian commitment that Israel has been engaged in while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad mutilates and murders children and their Sunni parents, citizens of Syria who have protested their government's oppression of the majority Sunni population. Israeli medics have operated on Syrian children who have been wounded in the air strikes the regime has carried out against its civilian population. And as Syrians attempting to escape the bombardment by Russia's air attacks supporting the Syrian regime's barrel bombs, reaching the Golan Heights, Israel has delivered food, medical supplies and aid.

The selfless courage of the White Helmet volunteers throughout the latter years of this prolonged civil war in exposing themselves to danger while moving into bombed areas to rescue men, women and children buried in rubble. is well known. They have themselves fallen victims to those same attacks when the Syrian military has deliberately aimed at killing them. Hospitals, schools and medical clinics in areas where Sunni Syrians live have been deliberately targeted by both Syrian and Russian planes, to destroy the capacity of medical personnel to operate their facilities to save lives.

Now that the regime is recapturing areas of the country that had fallen to the Syrian rebels, all Sunni Syrians are regarded by their president as traitors. The White Helmets in particular are labelled 'terrorists' by the regime. Which is now excoriating the rescue of hundreds of White Helmet volunteers and their families from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, bordering Israel. Israel, in a surprise, precise military action, has bused those they had escorted into the Israeli Golan Heights, on to Jordan which had agreed to accept them on a temporary basis.

The evacuation represents the first Israeli intervention (beyond bombing Hezbollah and IRCG transport of weapons) in Syria.  AP Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets

Germany, Canada and the U.K. have agreed to accept all those rescued as refugees. And they are indeed refugees from the carnage and certain death that Assad had planned for the the rescue service volunteers. Syria, in a vitriolic response to their rescue has characterized it as a "criminal operation" undertaken by "Israel and its tools". Also known as the Syria Civil Defence group, Assad accuses them of being a terrorist organization sponsored by the West. The White Helmets, he spits in fury, are joined with Al-Qaeda in Syria.

"98 male and female White Helmet volunteers, with 324 of their family members - mostly women and children - have arrived in Jordan through the occupied Syrian Golan Heights after being forced to flee their homes in southern Syria."
"The UNHCR participated in the coordination of the agreement to resettle the 422 rescue workers and their family members in countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, among others."
"As Syrians who love our country, it breaks our hearts to be forced to leave it, but it was the only alternative for our trapped volunteers who would otherwise have faced detention or death at the hands of the Syrian regime and its ally Russia."
"In the absence of the requested protection, we thank all governments who contributed to the success of this operation to rescue the rescuers, and we ask that they do more to help the hundreds of thousands remaining in southern Syria. We confirm that the Syrian Civil Defense will continue its mission to serve the Syrian people in all possible areas. 3750 White Helmets remain working on the ground in Syria to do so."
Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets statement 

Note the absence of any mention of Israel in this statement of appreciation.

People walk past Israeli soldiers as they board a bus during the White Helmets extraction from the Golan Heights   Israel Army handout via Reuters

"Israel has always lied claiming that it doesn’t have a relation to the war waged on Syria."
"[Israel] has smuggled hundreds of members of the ‘White Helmets’ terrorist organization and of the leaders of other armed terrorist organizations in cooperation with the governments of the U.S., Britain, Jordan and Germany."
Syrian foreign ministry, Syrian official news agency SANA

Cautious, Careful, Desperate Emergency Rescue in Thailand

"This is a careful, delicate operation fraught with risk. But this rescue plan - daring, dangerous and complicated - is working. It's delivering success, against such difficult odds. Relief is starting to break the tension that's built over more than two weeks."
"There's been another pause here overnight. Nobody wants to rush. There's admiration for the dive team's dedication, their skill and experience. They've risen to this challenge. But four of the boys, and their football coach, are underground for a 17th night. On Tuesday we'll all hold our breath once more, in the hope of seeing them emerge."
Thai Navy Seals Facebook page update

 

The expected monsoon rains falling on the limestone mountain were responsible for the decision made to wait no longer to rescue the twelve boys and their coach of the Wild Boar soccer team stranded by floodwaters since June 23, in a northern Thailand cave complex, the Tham Luan cave system in Chiang Rai province.

"If we wait and the rain comes in the next few days, we will be tired again from pumping and our readiness would drop. If that's the case, then we have to reassess the situation."
"We can only carry on the operation once we are ready -- and this will be done soon, because the air tanks and other systems have to be reinstalled."
"Today is D-day. A new storm is coming. If we wait and rainwater comes in, our readiness will be lower than now. There is no other day that we are more ready than today. Otherwise, we will lose the opportunity."
Narongsak Osotanakorn, former Chaing Rai governor, Sunday night

That the rescue represents a dire emergency, and that this rescue throbs with sinister danger to all involved was brought  home two days earlier when a volunteer ex-Thai Navy SEAL diver lost his life after delivering food and oxygen supplies to the stranded boys when on his return trip back to the cave mouth he himself ran out of oxygen and perished. The plight of the boys facing the indomitable force of nature brought the attention of the world to this vibrant drama of survival.

The Thai navy SEALs were swiftly joined by experienced cave divers from the international community. Their expertise resulted in two British divers, considered the best in their field, discovering the whereabouts of the stranded group four kilometers into the cave and passage complex, seated on a shelf above floodwaters, where they had awaited rescue for a full ten days without food and with dwindling hope.

The boys, aged between 11 and 17, became trapped with their coach on 23 June  Getty Images

When the world heard that four of the boys had been guided underwater through that long and terrifying journey underwater, an exhalation of relief stirred the world. Those first four boys were selected as the strongest of the team, others were in more delicate physical condition from their ten-day privation, slowly starving to death, among them the 25-year-old coach.

All other possible escape routes -- from drilling escape shafts or pumping out enough water to enable them to walk out -- were abandoned when it became evident that oxygen in the cave was being depleted and the threat of the onset of heavy rains augured greater flooding issues, making escape even more dangerous. Even so, the option of diving out was recognized for the formidable danger it represented; that it was chosen made it clear that other options were simply unfeasible.

"Clearly there is a huge risk of someone panicking if they are not used to the diving environment. It happens to adults in the open water, never mind children in a dark cave", remarked Tony Haigh, spokesman for the British Cave Rescue Council. "I've no doubt some will be more apprehensive than others."

Saman Gunan lost his life during rescue efforts of twelve boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. USA TODAY

None of the boys is able to swim. Other than the extensive diving lessons that took place since their discovery by the British divers, this would be their first real introduction to the medium of water as a gateway out of hell. The major risk in the venture of guiding them out through the floodwaters was seen to be that of running out of the air supply prematurely, the very thing that caused the death of former SEAL Saman Gunan.

Ambulances took their stations outside the cave complex in advance of the rescue attempt on Sunday and officials shifted the media away from the rescue site to enable the rescuers directly involved on the extraction to have free, unimpeded space. At 9:00 a.m. Sunday, thirteen divers advanced toward the trapped group supported by a team of 90 Thai navy SEALs and divers from Britain, Australia, the U.S., China and other involved nations.

The four selected boys were taken on a route underwater for a kilometer before they reached the area where the floodwaters were finally absent. Wearing "positive pressure" face masks preventing water leaking, clinging to a guide rope, squeezing through gaps of 40 centimetres in width, rescue divers removed the boys' oxygen tanks to push them forward ahead of the boys and the first of the rescued survivors reached safety at 5:40 p.m.

Now, it is eight out, four boys left to go along with their coach before the rescue is final and celebrations can begin.

Hoping for Miracles of Divine Intervention   RESCUED!

"Inside the cave is tough. I can guarantee that we will not panic, we will not stop our mission, we will not let the sacrifice of our friend [Saman Gunan, volunteer ex Thai Navy SEAL delivering supplies underwater to the children and their rescuers who drowned from lack of oxygen in the flooded passageway on Friday] go to waste."
"We can no longer wait for all conditions [to be ready] because circumstances are pressuring us."
"We originally thought the boys can stay safe inside the cave for quite some time, but circumstances have changed. We have limited amount of time."
Thai SEAL commander Rear Adm. Arpakorn Yookongkaew

Hundreds of rescuers with equipment continue the rescue operation at the Tham Luang Nang Non cave on July 6.

"It's very likely that while the boys were in the cave but not yet discovered by rescuers that they experienced various degrees of anxiety, fear, confusion, vulnerability and dependency, and perhaps hopelessness."
"Being discovered was a moment of elation. But that is now followed by the reality that a difficult technical rescue might be necessary, which caries with it disappointment for the boys and a new set of fears."
Paul Auerback, Department of Emergency Medicine, medical school, Stanford University

On the plus side in this situation in Mae Sai, Thailand, the 25-year-old coach of the Wild Boars soccer team, who led a dozen of the team's players ranging in age from 11 to 16 into the now-monsoon-flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave, Ekapol Chanthawong, had extensive training as a Buddhist monk where meditation, calm and humour were the elements that buoyed his elevation into the monkhood.

Under his tutelage, his calming presence and spiritual sensibilities in a society that venerates those elements of the human character that are the most reflective of the divine, videos taken from within the cave show the now-thin and weak boys in good spirits, laughing at jokes, smiling for the camera. The days'-long consultations of experts in the field of cave rescue has vacillated between swift extraction and the patience it would take for the flood waters to subside.

Both options are rife with danger.

The teammates have sent letters to their parents telling them 'don't worry'   AP

The passage through the flooded caverns and narrow passageways is a three-hour excursion each way presenting dangers of negotiation challenging those considered expert divers; to attempt to 'teach' the thirteen stranded people who have no idea even how to swim, how to navigate those waters in wetsuits and breathing apparatus goes beyond any ordinary challenge. Yet to wait out the floods means the potential that with ongoing monsoon weather the floodwaters might rise even higher.

And now, new challenges; oxygen is running out; the ambient oxygen in the chamber is being used at a much faster rate than previously, given the appearance of rescuers, the medical personnel, the providers of supplies coming and going. And for two of the smaller boys -- should the immediate extraction option be chosen in fear of rising floodwaters and oxygen depletion be chosen -- no wet suits small enough to fit them can be found.

Divers may be forced by all these circumstances to make the attempt to guide the boys to dive and manage their way through the complex route of narrow passageways; that fraught and dangerous route whose threats are enough to faze even expert divers with ample experience. The death of one of the divers can be seen as a reminder of just how dangerous that passage through the complicated cave system is for trained adults, professional cave divers.

"If we think the big rain is coming then we will have to get them out", repeated Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn, of the boys he claims are in good health and have gained confidence in practising wearing diving masks and breathing, to prepare them for the possibility of diving.

Divine intervention? Perhaps, but it is the focus of the world on the courage, skill and determination of the rescuers that have managed to rescue four of the boys from the possibility of a watery grave, brought them safely out, and prepare now to continue their rescue of the remainder of the boys and their coach, to bring this mind-gripping issue to its conclusion...