First Responder: What you can never forget

An ambulance crew coming back off their third call in a row stopped off at a convenience store to grab a snack and cold drink. As the crew exited the truck, the emergency medical technician glanced over at a vehicle that had just pulled in with a small child standing up in the seat. The veteran EMT’s face went red and he waited until the woman opened her car door. As she exited her vehicle, he asked her to come over to him for a second.

“Lady, you do know there’s a law about unrestrained children in cars, right,” the EMT asked. The woman glared at him in a way that said she really wasn’t interested in what he had to say.

“Do you understand what I’m saying,” he asked her, and she replied with a simple “yeah, I guess.” Obviously aware his point hadn’t hit home, the EMT began to unleash upon the woman.

“You don’t know what it’s like to pull up on a car that’s tore up and a little child about your son’s size pinned up under the dashboard,” the heartfelt speech began. “To see that precious child lying there dead because a simple car seat wasn’t there to keep him from flying through the car,” he continued. The lady turned and walked away without saying a word. The EMT got back into his ambulance and waited for his partner and paramedic student to return from inside the store. That happened one afternoon in Morehead, as I was the paramedic student riding along with that crew. Some will say it wasn’t the EMT’s place to chastise the lady for poor decisions she made, but look at it from the eyes of the responder for a minute.

I joined the Owingsville Fire Department as a junior member at the age of 16. When I was ‘official’ at the age of 18, I could respond to real calls with the department. In addition to fires, we were responsible for all vehicle extrications and other emergency calls as requested. My first ‘bad’ call was in April 1992, along Interstate 64 at the 127-mile marker.

A car had run off the road into some trees and caught fire with a lady trapped in it. As I sat in the fire truck on the way there, I couldn’t help to think of two friends of mine who died in a similar way almost exactly two years before. Once on scene, we went into full fire and rescue mode, I was part of the crew that put the fire out, which had by then totally engulfed the car and poor lady inside. She never made a sound; we thought she had perished in the flames and were quite shocked to see her turn to look at us as we worked to get all the fire out. Another crew used the Jaws of Life on the car door to get her out and she lunged out at the guys standing there. There are no words to describe the horrific scene, no details I would want to share with readers, anyway. The ambulance crew went to work on her and quickly transported her to St. Claire hospital where a helicopter would be summoned to airlift her to a burn center. That lady’s name was Rita, a name that’s stuck with me all this time. She was freed from her suffering later that evening, but the images I saw will always be in my mind.

You may wonder why I didn’t run away and never respond ever again after seeing that sight along the interstate. Like any other responder, I enjoyed being able to help people, and still do after all these years; that’s why we do what we do even during those bad calls. That wreck was something we all chalked up that day as being part of the job. Some older, veteran firefighters had already been exposed to that kind of trauma and even more in their years, so the counseling we younger guys got was, “you’ll see it again, it’s part of it.” It’s that mentality emergency responders have that eases the shock and awe of the job for some. Over time, the bad calls start running together and we start playing certain scenes back in our minds, whether we want to or not. The official term for this is called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which is more akin to returning soldiers from wars beyond, but can happen to anyone who has witnessed or been a part of a traumatic event that involves immediate danger or death. We deal with it in various ways; some try to rationalize the events, some self medicate themselves into an oblivious state, others delve deeper into a dark self contained abyss that is a down right scary place to be.

The emergency responders on Sept. 11, 2001 are hailed as heroes. Not a single person involved, responder or civilian, was left unaffected that day. To see that much carnage and devastation in Manhattan or Washington, D.C. would be more than any one of us could fathom. All involved that day are heroes in my opinion, because they are survivors. The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 was society’s first glimpse into Responder PTSD; the image of the firefighter carrying the bloodied, limp body of a child from the wreckage of the Murroh Building speaks volumes. It was there, for the first time, it was recognized that emergency personnel could be affected by just doing their job. But yet, it is expected for those who dedicate to save to be tough as nails and pass it all off as part of it.

I joined the Army when I was 18 and became a Combat Medical Specialist, or in civilian terms, an Army Medic. I was deployed to Saudi Arabia as part of the Persian Gulf War operative and was a medic for a Patriot Missile Battalion. During my time there, I never saw the horrors of war; in fact, the worst thing I saw was a guy get his finger severed. It wasn’t until I reported to Fort Campbell, Kentucky that I saw a plethora of traumatic events. The biggest incident I was part of was when two Blackhawk helicopters collided in midair during a training exercise in June 1996. I was part of the receiving triage team, which meant when injured people came to the hospital via truck or helicopter, I sorted them out in order of their injuries and sent them into awaiting doctors in the hospital. The final tally was over 40 injured and six killed that day. From March 1995 until I left in September 1996, I worked shootings, stabbings, domestic assaults that left women battered nearly to death and numerous car accidents. On top of that were the military training exercises that went wrong; like the squad of soldiers that had a grenade bounce out of a foxhole onto them and explode or the battalion commander who took an accidental M-16 bullet to the back of his head on his last training exercise with his unit. But, it was, again, just ‘part of it’.

Posttraumatic stress is attributed to a mental disorder and those who exhibit signs and symptoms quickly deny they have PTSD in fear that they will be labeled as being a ‘mental case’ or crazy. These issues can bottle up and for some people can explode into a Vesuvian level meltdown. It is the stigma that if help is sought then the responder will lose their job and their credibility. The number of responder suicides has increased over the years, as well as alcohol related incidents and domestic violence within the ranks. It’s easy for people to say, “suck it up, drive on,” but for many, the images of the horrific things we’ve seen are just too much eventually.

In my twenty something years of being a first responder, I’ve seen my share of bad things. Like nearly all other responders, images in my mind still haunt me and always will. Being from a small community, the likelihood of responding to a call and it being someone we know very well or a family member is always looming. In April, 2004, while responding to a call in Salt Lick, a fellow responder going to the same call I was going to rolled her vehicle just up ahead of me and was thrown out onto the roadway, nearly killing her. This responder happened to also be the sister of a woman I was dating at the time. We do the job because we love it and love helping people. I’m always asked how I handle it all; my reply is always, I do what I do to the best of my training and rationalize it all out in my own way. We don’t do it for the glory and accolades; if it’s an ego trip to do the job, then my advice is to reconsider your career choices. Seeing things through the eyes of a responder can be a scary, dark thing. Our humor is off the wall and macabre’ at best. But also, know that the people who pledge their lives to save other are human too, and sometimes need time to grieve and process what has been seen, and cannot be unseen.