Scots husband reunited with wife after diving ordeal

Jun 8 2008 By Bruce Walker

A Scots husband has been reunited with the wife he feared was dead after going missing while diving.

Kathleen Mitchinson and four other divers were rescued from a desert island where they were attacked by vicious komodo dragons.

Ernest Lewandowski had searched for two days after the group were swept 20 miles from their dive site to the Komodo National Park in Indonesia.

Once finally reunited with his wife, he told her: "Thank God you're alive."

He spent last night at Kathleen's hospital bedside.

She had been instructing the other divers - Charlotte Allin, her boyfriend James Manning, Frenchman Laurent Pinel and Swede Elena Neralairen.

Ernest said: "They have been found, they are alive and are now on their way to get medical assistance."

Yesterday a friend manning Ernest's mobile phone said: "Ernest is away to hospital to see his wife.

"He will be at her bedside making sure everything is OK.

"He is exhausted after searching for her for the past two days but he is just glad she is back on dry land.

"Being swept away from your dive site is a bit of an occupational hazard but I'm sure it won't put either of them off getting back in the water."

Diver Charlotte's father, Dave Allin added: "We know they have been found. It is fantastic news. It has been a very long night. I haven't spoken to Charlotte yet andwe don't know what their medical condition is - they have been floating out there for two days."

The group was found at Mantaolan, which is on the island of Rinca, off the coast of Komodo National Park.

They had spent nine hours adrift and struggling against the current.

Realising there was no way back to their boat, they stopped swimming to conserve energy and tied themselves together with their diving vests to keep them from drifting apart.

Diver Laurent, 31, said they saw the island late on Thursday and decided to make one more effort to reach land so they did not risk being swept out into open sea.

He added: "If we'd continued (to drift), it would have been into the ocean.

"We were exhausted.

Everyone had cramps."

When they made it to the island, they had no food or drinking water and survived by eating seafood they

scavenged. While there they had to fend off an attack from a komodo dragon - an aggressive monitor lizard that can easily kill a human.

Laurent said: "We had nothing to eat.Weate some kind of mussels scraped from the rocks. On the beach a komodo dragon came among us."

He said the group threw rocks at the lizard - whose bite can be fatal due to killer bacteria in its saliva - to scare it away.

After being rescued they were taken to hospital in Labuan Bajo, on the western tip of the island of Flores, where they received medical attention for dehydration and cuts and bruises.

Ernest had been leading another dive group when his wife disappeared.

He raised the alarm on Thursday after surfacing and realising the second group were missing.

Authorities launched a search using the Indonesian police and navy.

The group were found by Komodo Park Rangers around midday yesterday.

Mr Allin added: "It has been a very long night and this is fantastic news.

"We don't know what their condition is - they have been out there for two days. We are waiting for news of how they are."

Kathleen and Ernest have run the Reefseekers Diving Centre in Labuan Bajo for 15 years.

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'It has been a long night..this is fantastic news'

Diver Charlotte's dad Dave Allin