Greg and Linda Profeta with their daughter, left, after she had been rescued from her fall from the wharf at Wynyard Quarter. Photo / Doug Sherring
Greg and Linda Profeta with their daughter, left, after she had been rescued from her fall from the wharf at Wynyard Quarter. Photo / Doug Sherring
Mother faces year-long recovery after harbour jump to rescue her 3-year-old daughter.
Waterfront Auckland is looking at new safety measures at Wynyard Quarter after a 3-year-old girl fell into the water.
The girl's mother, who jumped in to save her, faces a year-long road to recovery after she smashed both feet on the metal lip of a boat she landed on.
The US visitors, who live in Hong Kong, had been eating at the Merchants of Venice restaurant on January 24.
The girl's father, Greg Profeta, a partner with finance giant PWC, said his wife, Linda, was taking photographs of the couple's two children as they played near art installations on North Wharf when their daughter plunged into the harbour.
"All I hear is a scream, and I see my wife jump into the water and I see my son, who's 5, also screaming at the end of the pier," he told the Herald on Sunday.
"I ran from the restaurant, not sure what I was going to see: am I going to see blood, am I not going to see my daughter?"
Fortunately, his daughter had her head above the water and was "swimming for dear life" while his wife frantically made her way to the girl. Greg jumped in after her and dragged his family to the edge of a nearby car ferry. By that time a large crowd had gathered and clambered to help, throwing life rings into the water.
"As my wife handed me the baby she turned to me and her face ... you could see the agony on it because the adrenaline had stopped at that point.
"She said 'My feet are broken. My feet, they hurt a lot and they feel like they're expanding'."
It appeared that when she jumped the 2m or so into the water her feet struck the bottom of a ferry, which had a metal lip jutting out.
His wife's pain was such that she could not be pulled straight out of the water and was instead loaded on to a Coastguard vessel and taken to shore.
The wharf at Wynyard Quarter. Photo / Doug Sherring
Linda had surgery on both her feet in Hong Kong last week, requiring two plates and 12 screws to be inserted as well as a bone graft.
Greg said she would need to be in a wheelchair for three months and it would likely be a year before she was back to full strength.
Profeta said his daughter had fallen through a gap in the pier which he considered a serious hazard on the heavily-used walkway.
Waterfront Auckland said this was the first accidental fall from the wharf since it opened to the public in 2011 and came over one of the busiest weekends in the year, Auckland Anniversary Weekend, with an estimated 125,000 visitors to the area.
It said it was considering safety measures including reviewing the gap between the wooden bumper installed to absorb the kinetic energy of a vessel berthing against the wharf. Other measures included additional ladders on the water's edge.
