Two teenage girls narrowly escaped drowning after an off duty firefighter pulled them from swollen floodwaters in Gungahlin yesterday.
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The dramatic rescue was one of several throughout the capital region, with eight distressed bushwalkers also flown out of the snow-capped surrounds of Thredbo and Mount Gudgenby.
Paul Ribbons from the ACT Ambulance Service said the teenagers got knocked off their feet into Yerrabi Pond while trying to cross a flood stormwater valve at Amaroo around 2.30pm.
''One of the girls didn't know how to swim,'' he said.
''She started to sink. An off duty firefighter heard the girls scream and jumped in the water.''
Mr Ribbons said one girl was under the water for a ''good number of minutes'' before the firefighter managed to pull the pair out and begin CPR.
''If he hadn't jumped in, she would have died,'' he said.
Both girls were stabilised by intensive care paramedics on the scene before being transported to Calvary Hospital, where one teenager remained in a serious condition last night. The other girl was in a stable condition.
Mr Ribbons said emergency services were very concerned about people underestimating the danger of flooded drains.
''I've been here 20 years, I've seen a few kids washed away in these things,'' he said.
The Snowy Hydro Southcare rescue helicopter was also tasked for two search and rescue operations earlier in the day, with a group of six bushwalkers activating an emergency beacon in the far south of the Namadgi National Park about 8am.
The helicopter crew found the uninjured group near Mount Gudgenby at about 9.15am and flew them out of the national park to the town of Michelago.
The party was believed to have been poorly prepared for the extreme weather conditions, with the temperature at about 9am dropping to minus 1 degrees.
Southcare pilot Captain Bryce England said the conditions were ''crazy''.
''There was a lot of low cloud, quite strong winds and a little bit of snow,'' he said.
''We had to fly through that to get there. This is certainly some of the trickiest weather I've flown in since being with Southcare. There's snow up there in places that haven't seen snow all winter. That's how crazy the weather was.''
Later that afternoon, two walkers were found near Thredbo after becoming lost.
The helicopter crew helped rescue a man and woman, both 18, who had set off a distress beacon in an area about 10km south of Thredbo Village.
The pair were taken to Jindabyne for initial assessment, with the man then flown on to Canberra Hospital in a stable condition.