Updated story:Man rescued from river jumped but was resuscitated, claims paramedic

December 17, 2010 – Divers jumping from a helicopter hovering over the frigid Chicago River Friday afternoon rescued an elderly man who had fallen in near the Dearborn Street Bridge.

A Chicago Fire Department official on the scene said they were alerted to a person in the river at about 2:47 p.m. They arrived about three minutes later with a helicopter that happened to be flying when the call came in and not far away.

Witnesses say the helicopter hovered about ten feet above the river. CFD spokesperson Kevin MacGregor says when divers arrived, the man was still on the surface of the water. “They got him out immediately to the ambulance which was right at the bridge and they worked on him.”

Fire officials do not know how the unidentified man ended up in the river or how long he was in the water. He was pulled to the south shore, carried to Lower Wacker Drive, and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition. MacGregor says the man was not responsive.

“If he’s got any chance of survival at all, it’s because of the fact that there was such an immediate response there. And the helicopter happened to have been up in the air and not too far away and they had divers ready to go. When they arrived at the scene they spotted him, they jumped from the helicopter. So it was an immediate response.”

It was about 23 degrees in downtown Chicago on Friday afternoon. The rescue took about eight minutes.

(Left) CFD divers climb out of the Chicago River Friday after rescuing a man spotted in the river at about 2:47 p.m. (Above) A rescue helicopter hovers over the Chicago River. Photo by Thomas Grether. (Click on images to view larger versions.)  More photos

Thomas Grether, a customer service representative from Minnesota, saw the rescue from Dick’s Last Resort at Marina City.

“It looked like an older man who was face down, floating in the river, and all the emergency vehicles started coming pretty quick…and then we saw the helicopter come in.”

Grether says two divers jumped out of the helicopter and one diver swam over from the south shore. They tied ropes to the man so he could be pulled out.

(Below) CFD personnel at about 2:56 p.m. pull an unidentified man in critical condition from the Chicago River.

Video captured by Grether from Dick’s Last Resort shows three and a half minutes of the rescue…