New York Rural/Metro Crew Describes Firefighter Rescue
Aug. 3--The members of the Rural/Metro team who helped save injured Firefighter Mark Reed's life two months ago performed with critical minutes working against them.
"We like to have our response time be less than eight minutes," said Matt DeRose, a Rural/Metro Paramedic field supervisor who was on the scene that night when a brick chimney came toppling down on Reed as he was battling an arson fire at a vacant house at 120 Wende St.
Despite the severity of Reed's injuries, "things went fantastically in his favor," DeRose recalled Thurs -- day. Reed was discharged Wednesday from Erie County Medical Center and vowed to return to the Buffalo Fire Department in a less physically demanding job.
DeRose, paramedic Jacqui Petersen and Emergency Medical Technician Elizabeth Servis were on the scene shortly after firefighters from Engine 31 and Hook & Ladder 14 arrived at the fire.
"We stand by at all the fires in the City of Buffalo," said DeRose, who estimates that he was no more than 50 feet away from Reed when the chimney came crashing down.
"We watched the whole thing," DeRose said.
Reed and the other firefighters from Engine 31 were fighting the fire in an alleyway between the burning house and attempting to protect the house next door, he said. DeRose said he heard an initial creak and then two loud bangs.
"I was watching, and you could just see the chimney fall through the side of the house and a couple of the other guys got bumps and bruises, but he took the brunt of the chimney," DeRose recalled.
The paramedics quickly grabbed a stretcher and headed for the front of the house next door that was not on fire. De- Rose and Petersen grabbed the immobilization board off the stretcher and slid it down the alleyway to the fire.
He said their first mission was to protect his spine by immobilizing his neck with a collar. "If he hadn't already been paralyzed, we wanted to prevent any kind of injury like that, so we put a collar in place to keep his head still," DeRose said.
They then put him on a backboard and taped his head down to keep it in place. Petersen, meanwhile, inserted a tube into Reed's trachea to ensure that his lungs would get air, providing oxygenated blood to both his heart and his brain. That was crucial, DeRose said.
The paramedics had had a long professional relationship with Reed. "He's one of the guys that we take calls with every day," Petersen said.
She and DeRose said they were not initially aware of the identity of the injured firefighter they were helping to save.
"Seeing him initially and hearing the name Mark, I wasn't able to put the name with the face, he was so badly hurt. Once we heard the last name, we started to put things together and said: 'Oh, my gosh, it's Mark,' " Petersen said.
DeRose, who had worked with Reed for 10 years, said he didn't realize it was Reed until they had gotten the firefighter inside the ambulance and could see the name tag on Reed's shirt. Even with that revelation, DeRose and the others were able to maintain their composure. "You're running off of instinct at that point. Your training takes over," DeRose said.
DeRose said a rush of emotions took over afterward.
"I was in shock for a little bit. It took me a good 20 minutes after we got to the hospital to calm down and think about what had happened," he said.
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