A 15-month-old girl needed help from firefighters to free her fingers from a bath drain in Dandenong.
The Dandenong and Hallam crews responded to the call for help late on Sunday 11 December, and the last firefighters returned to the station just after 2am the following day.
The girl’s mum had tried soap, detergent and other tactics to free the digits, but called triple-zero when nothing would work.
Leading firefighter Ryan Vague said that although the little girl was distressed, she showed amazing resilience and managed to keep relatively calm throughout the incident.
“Like most little kids, she kept her teddy close by and her mum and aunty were great at chatting to her and keeping her distracted,” he said.
Crews took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to remove part of the old cast iron bath.
They freed two trapped fingers using a combination of various cutting gear and a lot of manual work, but one finger remained stuck.
“The older design of the bath made it difficult to free her fingers,“ Mr Vague said.
“We had to disconnect the pipes and cut a section out of the bath which was then transported to the hospital with the little girl.
“We used just about every tool in the toolbox including impact drivers and drills, a battery-operated saw and high resolution cutting disks.”
Some CFA members from Dandenong accompanied the child with Ambulance Victoria – and part of the bath – to Dandenong Hospital where they took another two and a half hours to cut the iron plug from around the child’s fingers.
She was finally freed without injury.
