Moment boy, 8, is found floating inside a bubble in the middle of the sea
This is the moment a boy was found in a soap bubble adrift in a Brazilian sea.
Video footage showed a person on a boat tying a rope around the bell and dragging it to shore at Lázaro Beach in Ubatuba, São Paulo, where the child, who is about eight years old, was reunited with his parents .
Rafael do Prado told news channel Metropoles that the child was playing in the bell on the beach when the cable snapped and was dragged further out to sea.
He was out on his boat with his children when he saw the giant plastic ball and was curious to see if it was someone when he navigated to it and saw the ball inside.
He spoke to the child and kept him calm as he waited for his friend, Welington Junior, to arrive in a speedboat better equipped to carry out the rescue mission.
“I was worried about whether or not he could breathe, because the buoy is dangerous,” Do Prado recalled.
“There’s a certain amount of time you can breathe into it. I calmed him down and then my daughter started filming.”
Junior initially thought about opening the bell, but was warned not to open the zipper.
A child about eight years old was found trapped in a plastic bubble, drifted and found floating in the sea on Christmas Eve near Lázaro Beach in Ubatuba, a city in the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo.
Rescuers thought about opening the bell through the zipper and then decided it was best to tie a rope to it and drag it to the beach shore
“I was afraid it would deflate with him in it,” Junior said.
“We put a rope through the bell and dragged him as fast as we could, because we couldn’t go too fast or we might hurt the boy.”
The Maritime Firefighters Group warned beachgoers of the dangers of using bubbles and other floating devices on the beach when they are more suitable for swimming pools.
“These types of toys are new for us on the beaches,” said Captain Karoline Magalhães.
The rescuers sailed back to the shore of Lázaro Beach with enough speed to prevent the bubble from deflating
A man on board a boat was filmed attaching a cable to the bubble before dragging it with the child inside
“It comes from swimming pools and now we are starting to have certain problems because this ball is easily carried away by the wind.”
The fire official added that the bubble in which the boy was found gives “a false sense of security.”
“For every three deaths at sea, a drowning process begins with floating objects,” Magalhães said.
“Whether it’s a surfboard, an inflatable mattress or these buoys, floating objects at sea are not safe.”