Heartwarming Stories of First Responders

Written by KOVA Corp

There are times when being a first responder means you aren’t going to get the best end to a story. It’s part of the job that the brave police, firefighters and EMTs who help people all over this country have to accept.

But thankfully, there are plenty of times when the story doesn’t end badly. The news is full of heart-warming, suspenseful,  and downright weird stories of rescues that end up working out. Here are just a few stories from around the country of first responders who saved the day regardless of the odds, the situation, and in some cases, the surroundings.

Swamp thing

Last June at the Pepper Ranch Preserve in Immokalee, FL, workers from several different public safety agencies spent five hours trying to rescue a worker from the University Of Florida who was collecting water samples in a distant area of the preserve.

The man, who had a history of heart problems, began experiencing dizziness and shortness of breath. 911 was called, and safety workers couldn’t get quite close enough in their vehicles to help the man.

So they spent the next several hours working their way through dense swampland to get to him, eventually bringing in a helicopter to help guide them on their path from above. And it wasn’t just an inconvenient - it was downright dangerous. A police deputy hacking his way through the vegetation with a machete had to kill an approaching water moccasin with it!

Eventually, a DIFFERENT helicopter equipped for air rescue was brought in once the rescue workers decided that the terrain was too risky to move him back out the way they came in.

Doggone lucky

Earlier this year in Tuscon, AZ, rescue workers helped out a four-legged friend who’d fallen on hard times - literally. Police and firefighters rescued a dog that had fallen down a storm drain, and they used a little ingenuity to do so: They helped lure the dog out with someone’s lunch.

Diving in

Also earlier this year in Bakersfield, CA, a teen who had taken a dive into more than he could handle got some on-the-spot help from a police officer.

The 17-year-old had gone into the water at Riverwalk Park, even though he didn’t know how to swim. He eventually got into water too deep to handle, and a quick-thinking officer who arrived on the scene simply dove into the water and pulled the frightened boy out.

Helping a four-year-old boy

Last August in Blount County, TN, a 4-year-old boy named Quinn Cross started choking on a grape. He’d had problems with choking before, but this time his mother’s use of the Heimlich maneuver didn’t help.

Quinn’s jaw had clenched shut as part of a neurological response to the choking, and EMT worker David Phillips worked to open his mouth as Quinn was transported to the hospital.

After going through every procedure he could think of, Phillips managed to get Quinn’s mouth to open just a bit, and he quickly suctioned the grape out of the little boy’s mouth. Desperately-needed oxygen finally flowed into Quinn’s body, and Phillips says that by the time they left the emergency room he was awake, alert and speaking to the doctors and nurses.

Phillips estimates he was without oxygen for around ten minutes, but months later, the only sign of Quinn’s trauma is a slight lisp when he speaks.

Trapped under a car

In December of 2016, a Harrisburg, VA woman was getting out of her car in extremely icy conditions, and the car began sliding backwards on the frozen-over surface of her parking space. The woman slipped on the ice as the car began rolling backwards, and the car somehow rolled over on top of her.

Public safety workers arrived on the scene quickly and began working to free the 21-year-old from underneath the car. She was eventually freed with minor injuries, and Harrisburg used the accident as an opportunity to remind motorists to be extremely careful in icy conditions.

At KOVA, we take our commitment to public safety workers of all kinds - 911 call-takers and dispatchers, disaster teams, and first responders - very seriously. To learn more about how we’re using public safety software solutions to help these workers do their jobs better every day, read our post “Why We Do What We Do: Working with Public Safety Organizations.

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