Firefighter who rescued teen on Oregon coast heralds ‘team effort’ in saving life

Tatum Todd / oregonlive.com (TNS)
Posted 1/16/25

Lieutenant Koa Lyu was paddling a rescue surfboard through the dark off of Cannon Beach on Thursday night, with waves reaching 10 feet in height, when he heard something over the sound of the surf. …

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Firefighter who rescued teen on Oregon coast heralds ‘team effort’ in saving life

Posted

Lieutenant Koa Lyu was paddling a rescue surfboard through the dark off of Cannon Beach on Thursday night, with waves reaching 10 feet in height, when he heard something over the sound of the surf. Pulling down his wetsuit’s hood, he was able to identify the sound: screaming.

Lyu, Cannon Beach Rural Fire District’s ocean safety division head, paddled toward the sound and finally caught a glimpse of the person he was looking for: a 19-year-old boogie boarder who had disappeared in the surf.

When the call had come in, around 5:30 p.m., Lyu and his fellow firefighters were surprised.

“We never expected anyone to be in the water in January,” Lyu said. “It was kind of a crazy night.”

At the time, Lyu was getting ready for his badge-pinning ceremony — he was about to receive his lieutenant’s badge, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Instead, he and his colleagues rushed to the beach, where they found the teenager’s distraught family. Beyond, massive waves were crashing in the dark.

The firefighters called the U.S. Coast Guard for a helicopter, but they knew that would take at least 20 minutes, Lyu said.

With time running out before the lost teenager would likely succumb to exhaustion or hypothermia, the firefighters quickly put together a plan: Lyu would swim out on a surfboard, with another swimmer as backup, while the other firefighters positioned their vehicles on the beach so their headlights might provide some light off shore.

Before he paddled out, Lyu said, he and the other rescue swimmer stood waist-deep in the sea to try and gauge the direction that the currents likely took the teenager.

Hoping that it wasn’t too late, Lyu swam into the current.

Soon he was hit from the side by a large wave, Lyu said. But years of lifeguard- and- water-rescue experience, beginning when he was a teenager in Hawaii, served him well. The 37-year-old firefighter was able to orient himself in the dangerous waters and keep going.



Then he heard, off in the distance, the screaming.

Just as he found the teenager, who, exhausted, was struggling to hang onto his own board about 75 yards from the shore, Lyu saw the U.S. Coast Guard helicopter cross the mountains towards Cannon Beach.

But they wouldn’t need a helicopter rescue.

“‘He kind of yelled, ‘Holy smokes, I thought I was going to die out here,’” Lyu remembered the teenager telling him.

Lyu got the teenager on his rescue board, and paddled him to shore, where the teen was brought by the other firefighters to a waiting ambulance and taken to a hospital.

The helicopter rescue was called off, and the teenager was evaluated and released, Lyu said.

Officials have not released the name of the teen.

For Lyu, it was an experience he’d had before but that never feels routine. A life-and-death situation.

“I’m feeling really jazzed about how we got him,” Lyu said. “It was a team effort, I couldn’t have done it solely.”

After he was out of the water, Lyu, feeling that “the stars had aligned” for the rescue, changed back into his dress uniform and, with his fellow firefighters at his side, returned to the station for his promotion ceremony.

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