Boy survives after 20 minutes under water

A 12-year-old Washington state boy is alive despite spending up to 20 minutes under water last Friday, when he was caught in a Pacific Ocean rip tide.

Dale Ostrander was visiting Long Beach, Washington with a church group when the incident occurred. Witnesses told WBIR that the boy was under water for up to 20 minutes before rescue crews found him. Ostrander was not conscious and not breathing when he was pulled out of the water, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, but he regained a faint heartbeat after receiving CPR.

The boy was then flown by helicopter to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and placed in a medically-induced coma.

"They never expected him to live," Dale's father Chad Ostrander told the Post-Intelligencer. "They expected him to be a vegetable—never walk, never talk, never say a word."

But on Sunday, when doctors called Dale's name, he opened his eyes and blinked. And on Monday, after a breathing tube had been removed, he even spoke.

"We were trying to get him to cough, to get the congestion [cleared]. [I told him,] 'You need to cough,'" Dale's mother Kristen Ostrander said. "And he coughed once. (And we said) 'OK, you need to do it again.' 'I don't need to' is what he said."

Dale appears to have a long road to recovery ahead, and he may never fully recover, but Chad Ostrander called what has happened so far a "miracle."

"God can work miracles," he said.

12-year-old Nicole Kissel, who was on a surfboard when she heard Dale's cries for help and tried to rescue him, described how she fought the current that ended up pulling Dale under.

"I was paddling with the other arm. He was kicking. And we just got farther out there," she told the Post-Intelligencer. "And I was so upset. I'm like, 'I can't die here. This isn't the end."'

Kissel was not hurt.