The staff and management of Prague Boats are deeply saddened by the tragic death of the great artist and major public figure Jan Tříska.
The crew of the Labe boat from the Prague Boats fleet made every effort to save Mr Tříska after his fall from Charles Bridge into the Vltava, and with the help of the Polish passengers got him to an ambulance very quickly. The rescue operation was carried out with great professionalism and in coordination with the Integrated Rescue System (IZS).
It is all the more upsetting to us that statements published in TV Nova's news and cited by other media, in which the Polish passengers who helped lift Jan Tříska from the water grossly disparaged the work of the Labe crew and the activity of the other boats. We believe that their statement was simply the result of a misunderstanding of the situation, in which a language barrier may have played a part, and that it stemmed from the sadness and disappointment that, despite all efforts, Jan Tříska's life could not be saved. We must firmly reject this statement and explain the circumstances of the rescue operation.
The Labe boat headed for the man in the water without any delay, the moment her crew learned of him. It is important to stress that, unlike the people on the bridge, the crews of the boats could only with difficulty see a body in the water; their angle of view made it harder. Of the boats nearby, Labe was the only one fitted with auxiliary steering, which allowed her to manoeuvre better towards the drowning man. Manoeuvring around Charles Bridge is fairly difficult for sightseeing boats, and it must be emphasised that large boats naturally have limited manoeuvrability.
We most emphatically reject the Polish passengers' accusation that the Labe's crew somehow prevented them from saving the drowning man. In reality, the crew kept them from jumping into the water from the upper deck while the boat was manoeuvring towards him, because doing so would have endangered both them and the rescue itself. There was a serious risk that instead of one person, several would need to be rescued — the cold water threatened very rapid hypothermia, jumping from the upper deck is dangerous in itself, and there was a risk that the would-be rescuers could end up under the boat or be caught by the propeller, and on top of that their presence in the water would have made the captain's already difficult manoeuvring even harder. It must also be noted that at that moment no one in the crew could have known that these were people somehow trained for water rescue; the crew had to treat them as ordinary passengers and try to keep any of them from coming to harm while attempting to save the drowning man. The crew tried to convince them that if they wanted to take part in the rescue, they should do so deliberately — for example, instead of jumping from a height, by entering the water from the lower deck only once the boat had manoeuvred up to the man in the water. The crew's concerns were further reinforced by the previous alcohol consumption of this particular group of Polish trippers.
We are grateful to the Polish passengers for their help once the drowning man had been lifted from the water, when they made a very significant contribution to his resuscitation; nevertheless, it must be said that in the first part of the rescue operation their efforts unfortunately tended at times to complicate matters. The crew of the boat, on the other hand, communicated with the IZS dispatcher from the very first moment and, in professional coordination with the IZS, managed to get the drowning man into an ambulance within a very short time, increasing his chances of survival. It is a tragic fact that, in the end, this effort was nonetheless unsuccessful.
We are truly very sorry that the public's grief over the death of a great personality is accompanied by senseless accusations against people who did everything in their power to prevent that death — and of course without any idea of who it was they were trying to save.
Ing. Jan Hamza, Managing Director of Prague Boats
