Greg Tersine, a Pittsburgh paramedic and crew chief diver, wasn’t assigned to patrol the city’s waterways on Jan. 29.
But when first responders received a call that a car had careened off the Parkway East and landed in the icy Monongahela River, Tersine was the first to put on his dry suit and plunge through a hole in the ice.
The water was barely above 30 degrees. Any equipment that got wet quickly began to freeze.
Tersine said he didn’t hesitate. He swam to the bottom of the river and, within about a minute of being underwater, located the submerged vehicle. It had landed in the water in the 900 block of Second Avenue, between the 10th Street and Birmingham bridges in Pittsburgh, shortly before 4:30 p.m.
Tersine pried open the driver’s side door and pulled the driver out. As he tried to retriever, he found himself stuck under a sheet of ice.
“It was a little bit of a panic for a second,” Tersine told reporters Tuesday during a ceremony honoring a slate of EMS personnel involved in the operation.
He soon located the same break in the ice he had used to jump into the river and pulled the woman out of the water. Other medics immediately started efforts to resuscitate her.
Jacinta Stevens, the driver of the Ford Explorer that plummeted 120 feet from the highway into the river, died. Stevens, 31, was remembered as a promising model and had recently started a job with the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh.
“We tried everything we could,” Tersine said.
City officials on Wednesday recognized Tersine and his colleagues for efforts to rescue Stevens, despite ice and dangerously cold temperatures.
“You all today that we are honoring risked your lives to save another Pittsburgher, to save someone who was in frigid conditions, and none of you hesitated,” Mayor Corey O’Connor said during a ceremony at the City-County Building.
About 30 people were honored for their work.
“What you do every day to preserve life is admirable,” Public Safety Director Sheldon Williams said. “But there are occasions where your efforts to preserve life are exceptional.”
Temperatures were in the low 20s, with wind chills dropping to the single digits, a scene EMS Chief Amera Gilchrist described as “blustering cold.” The rivers were mostly frozen. The city was recovering from the worst snowstorm it had seen in 16 years.
Despite the conditions, Gilchrist said, crews rushed to the scene — even medics who weren’t on duty at the time.
“They say that courage is contagious,” Gilchrist said. “By looking at some of these brave men and women here today, it’s easy to see why.”
Gilchrist praised EMS personnel who jumped in the water, as well as those who brought supplies or monitored to ensure their colleagues were out of the river before hypothermia could set in.
“It’s important to recognize the good work the members of this union do under very difficult conditions,” said Jon Atkinson, who leads the EMS union and was among the people honored at Wednesday’s ceremony.
He had been at the City-County Building Downtown when he heard the call. He rushed to the scene to check on his colleagues.
“Your work often goes unseen, but its impact is deeply felt in every life that you touch and every day that you come in to work,” Gilchrist told honorees Tuesday. “You are all true heroes every day.”