Revere attorney rushes to rescue near Point of Pines

REVERE – Robert Marra spotted the exhausted man wading out of the Pines River and quickly ran to a neighbor’s home to grab a blanket. That’s when the man told Marra another man was clinging to a channel buoy in the middle of the river.”He heard someone very faintly calling for help but the wind was directing the voice away from the beach,” said Fire Chief Eugene Doherty who credited Marra and fellow Rice Avenue resident Philip Consolo with helping rescue the two Lynn men late last Saturday evening.”Attorney Marra’s quick actions in getting help clearly made a difference in the outcome being quite tragic. The way the winds were blowing, the darkness setting in and the distance they were out were all working against their possible discovery,” Doherty said.Marra credited his two dogs with initially hearing the men shouting from the water.”I was in the right place at the right time. I had just rounded the point. I heard yelling but it was hard to tell where it was coming from. I spotted one person holding onto the buoy and the other in the water,” he said.The man in the water started swimming to shore. Marra ran to Consolo’s nearby home, told Consolo to call for help and dashed back to the beach in time to help the swimmer as he stumbled out of the surf.”He was exhausted. I gave him my coat then ran back to Phil’s house to grab a blanket.”The Fire Department’s small fleet of rescue craft sped onto the river and plucked Felix Rivera, 40, off the buoy where, Doherty said, he had been stranded for a half-hour. Rivera and his stepson were fishing in a small aluminum boat when the boat overturned in Saturday’s rough water and sank.Rivera was wearing a life jacket and declined, along with son, medical aid after an initial evaluation by emergency workers.”Both were clearly very close to hypothermia from being immersed in the water,” Doherty said.The rescue was the second undertaken by firefighters last weekend. Shortly before 6 p.m. on Saturday beach-goers near Bianchi’s Pizza spotted a sail boarder having difficulty getting onto shore. Strong winds drove the man down to the vicinity of 370 Ocean Avenue before the Fire Department Jet Ski sped to his rescue.Firefighter Sean Bruno jumped into the ocean in a cold-resistant immersion suit and helped Daniel Turetski, 22, of Newton get to shore.”He was more embarrassed and tired than injured and refused treatment or transport,” Doherty said.