On 5 September 1980 Fire Chief Gerald Jurgens of the Volunteer Fire Department of Eatonia, Saskatchewan, saved an eighteen-month-old boy from drowning after he had fallen into an abandoned well on his parent's farm. Fire Chief Jurgens displayed exceptional courage and leadership when, in spite of a sprained ankle, he tied a rope around his legs and instructed the people gathered about to lower him head first into the four-metre hole. Oblivious to the danger that the walls might cave in an any time, he reached the boy, and both were drawn to the surface. Without his prompt action, the child could not long have remained afloat in the metre-and-a-half of water at the bottom of the well.