It was a day I'd much rather forget.
We were on call that warm September day three years ago. As I remember correctly, it was a slow day: not much action going on. If there is one thing paramedics do not want, it's a slow business day because then we have to scare up something to do, to keep us occupied.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon (it was on a Friday), the emergency tones sounded, shattering the silesnce--and springing the gang into swift action. We grabbed our gear, grabbed our jackets (as it was chilly out, chillier than normal; temps in the 60s, rather fall like), and hightailed it to the ambulance that was parked in the garage.
As we got into the ambulance ("we" meaning George "Goose" Guzman, myself, and Wendell Gilmarten), we took the report and told the driver to hit the lights/sirens as we raced to the scene. The call was for a house fire. We knew we had to get there fast if anyone was to have a chance of surviving this thing.
We got to the scene within moments. The house involved in the fire was already ablaze: there were at least four fire trucks/fire departments already battling the thick smoke and the flames that were shooting from the windows and roof.
One firefighter who had been inside shouted that he'd found the body of a child, a little girl. She was lying in the kitchen, he said, and she wasn't moving. He went back in, where he brought the body out, handed it to me.
It wsa a small girl, no older than three at the most. She was all sooty and blackened from the smoke, but appeared to have no apparent burn marks on her body. However, she was unconscious; her eyes were closed, and she didn't appear to be breathing.
I started administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the child while the firefighter who'd rescued her went back inside. He brought out an even smaller child, this time a little boy appearing no more than one year in age. He was shockingly tiny. He, too, was found unconscious and not breathing. He handed the little guy to Wendell, and Wendell started working on him.
Finally, the firefighter brought out the final victim, another boy who looked to be about five. Like his two siblings, the child was unconscious, barely breathing. He was given to ""Goose", who started rescue efforts. Soon all three children were being tended to. We breathed for them, tried to get vital signs, but to no avail. The three children remained still, looking more dead than alive. Still, we refused to give up: we doggedly continued our rescue efforts on the three kids, hoping, praying for some kind of miracle, that they would come out of their present unconscious, unresponsive states.
A second ambulance arrived. The second paramedic team took over the care of the two older children while I concentrated on the baby. The baby was a pearlescent grey; he looked terrible. He showed no signs of life. When I tried to get an IV line going into a tiny vein, stabbing him in the arm, he showed no response to the pain, which was disconcerting.
Normally, if stuck by a needle or pinched, a child will either pull away or cry out: this baby did neither. He lay there on the ground, looking more dead than alive. At the sight of his lifeless form, my heart sank to my toes. He was clearly in danger of losing his life.
We got the heart monitor hooked up to him, tried to get a B/P reading, tried to find a pulse. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. The kid was asystole, meaning no heart rate, no respiration, no discernible blood pressure.
He was about as dead as dead could be--without being pronounced dead of course; that job was up to the doctor. Hopefully that wouldn't happen, especially if we got the kid to the hospital in time.
The other two 'medics weren't having much better luck with the other two kids. The kids remained unconscious, lifeless despite rescue efforts, although when in the rear of the ambulance, the little girl let out a soft gasp, which sounded like the coo of a dove. We felt our hearts leap to our throat; maybe we had managed to bring a small life back--but then, without warning, her head fell over to the one side limply as she stopped breathing.
It was a sickening moment.
We got the three children to the hospital, meanwhile, continuing rescue efforts. We got to the hospital in less than five minuts; we broke all speed records.
At the ambulance bay entrance, three nurses met us at the door, pushing stretchers. They quickly took the kids from us as we gave them the full report of what had happened, and gave them the latest condition of each child. Each child was not doing very well: their vital signs were erratic at best, and they still did not appear to have any life in their small, soot-covered bodies.
Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the little girl and her brothers could not be saved. They were all pronounced dead not even fifteen minutes after first arriving at the hospital ER.
At the news, I cried--no, we all cried. It didn't seem fair that three new lives were to be snuffed out before they even had a chance to grow up. It didn't seem fair that becuase of one of the children's curiosity, all three ended up dying needlessly. The fire had apparently been started by the oldest child playing with a cigarette lighter. A common childhood mistake, but a tragedy that could have very easily been prevented had the parents taken more responsibility in protecting their kids.
Such a shame. Such a g.d. shame!
I still have nightmares today. I close my eyes, I see the burning house, see the three young fire victims lying lifeless on the ground as we paramedics tried valiantly to save them, still smell the smoke, still (sometimes) taste the odor of the fire. I see their sweet, young faces, and all I can do is hang my head down and cry.
~Written by Lorene Tate, EMT, Nashville, Tennessee.
