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Show A phone call away: Park City's EMTs speed help to the stricken t ' ' " ' U'"''lli mim IP'" mmmmm'tKBml''mmmmm iiihii. ,isy . - .ftjmmsm --J: .v 1 , n Jji.- - , . j Dave Berg (left) and Steve Digges are two members of the Park City Fire Department who are also trained as emergency medical technicians to aid in their various rescue efforts. ; It did happen fast and the call was answered with equal quickness. It had to be. Speed saves lives. Now that it was all over, the consensus con-sensus at the bar was that the gent who fell would be be OK. Little did they know how close their friend was to death. "If an airway is completely obstructed, the victim has four to six minutes before brain damage occurs," oc-curs," Digges said in an interview several days after the incident. And he should know. He's the medical training coordinator for the Park City Fire Department. "It has to do with the position of the head and tongue. The muscles relax when you're unconscious and the tongue falls against the back of the head," he added. "A key to keeping keep-ing the air passage open is tilting the head and the neck back." His familiarity with the situation and speed and proficiency with which it was handled averted a potential horror story, But then, saving lives is part of his job. He has been with the Park City Fire Department for about two years and in that time he has amassed amass-ed 300 to 400 hours of training. But not every EMT has had that many hours of instruction. "We're required to have 48 hours of training within a two-year period to maintain our certificate," Digges said. "Usually the training is broken down into two-hour periods and specified as to certain categories, such as diabetes and cardiac care. "The firemen in Park City, however, exceed the minimum training required," he added. "There're so many emergencies you ha ve to be prepared for . " When he entered the Alamo, he was carrying what looked like a tool box. It was his "jump kit," containing contain-ing oral airways plastic tubes put in an unconscious victim's mouth to keep the passage open and a variety varie-ty of bandages. He had a bag-mask ventilation kit This is a bag and face piece that works in conjunction with the plastic tubes to replace artificial resuscitation. The truck he drives is loaded with emergency gear. He has heavy-duty scissors that can easily cut through clothes, leather and seat belts. He has a ring cutter, a stethoscope, blood pressure equipment and even an obstetrical kit to perform emergency deliveries. There's a tank of oxygen and more than 75 different dif-ferent types of bandages, plenty of splints and a burn sheet which is placed over a burn victim to prevent further infection. The vehicle is equipped with the "Jaws of Life," also know as the Hurst Tool, a hydraulic extricating tool vital in freeing people from crumpled autos in accidents. If you need it, they have it. And what is more important: It does not take them long to get it there. byJIMSMEDLEY Record staff writer It was an unusually quiet night in the Alamo Draft House, a private club oh Main Street. It was Thursday morning, just past 1 a.m. Two gentlemen were playing pool while another was trying try-ing to unravel the complexities of the video golf machine. There was easy talk between the nine or so patrons there. But suddenly, the calm was broken by a loud thud, accompanied immediately by the sound of a bouncing boun-cing bar stool and a beer mug shattering shat-tering on the floor. The pool game stopped and the electronic golfer was abandoned in mid-swing. It was dead quiet . . . for a moment. mo-ment. Everyone stared at the limp form molded to the cold, hard tile floor. Then seven people moved at once toward the figure. Everyone knew that the man, who was about 6-foot-l when he was able to stand, was in trouble. A lump . already had formed on his brow and blood slowly seeped from the small cut below the bruise. "Turn him on his side!" "Call the cops!" "Get away from him. Let him breathe!" "Turn him on his back. He can't breathe!" "Call the fire department." "C'mon, get away! He needs air." A couple of the men knelt beside him, keeping the large-framed ' figure on his side. The man, who appeared to be in his late 20s, did not move. You couldn't see his chest rise or fall. He seemed to be breathing. Or was he? He was out cold. He wasn't dead. Or was he? Everyone offered advice most of it contradictory. Who was right? How critical was it to be right? No one seemed to be in control. It was obvious the man fell off the bar stool. But why? Drugs? Too much to drink? Ten minutes ago he looked ..,, , OK. Could he have overdosed? , . .. , H'ltwu confuting. That top-it waw confusing to everybody there except the tall, slender blonde woman sitting sit-ting at the bar. She was the first one to look over at the man after he fell. It took her less than a minute to get the phone from the bartender. "Dial 911," she ordered the bartender as he handed her the receiver. While the others stood and knelt around the fallen man, she was talking talk-ing to an emergency dispatcher in Coalville. "Where are you?" the dispatcher said. v "The Alamo in Park City," the woman answered. "Help's on the way." The dispatcher began quizzing her about the injured man's conditionthe condi-tionthe size of the cut, the amount of bleeding. "He's turning blue!" a voice yelled. yell-ed. "He's turning blue," the woman repeated into the phone. She took instructions from the dispatcher and told a couple of the people attending him to turn him on his back and keep his head slightly tilted. He couldn't breathe when he was on his side. The moment they turned him onto his back, two Park City policemen - walked into the bar. One second behind them were two Park City firemen two emergency medical technicians, or EMTs. They went to work immediately and within five minutes the man lying ly-ing on the floor regained consciousness. con-sciousness. About 10 minutes later, they slipped a neck brace on the injured in-jured man and delicately slid him onto a stretcher. , His destination was the Holy Gross. TaBrtlyHealth and Emergency . Center in Park City, where he would be given X-rays and put under observation. obser-vation. He had simply passed out. "The alarm rang at the fire station ' at 1 : 24. We were in the truck at 1 : 26 and arrived at 1 : 27," said Steve Digges, Dig-ges, the fireman who, along with Dave Berg, answered the call at the Alamo. "We left the bar at 1:45." The woman knew what she was doing. do-ing. She had called 911 before and said it was the best thing to do in emergencies. The police chatted with the people in the bar, whic! was still buzzing with varied "eyewitness" accounts of what happened. "He went down like a sack of potatoes. Sure hope he's all right. He looked OK, didn't he? Aw, he's tough. He's not hurt," said one voice. "Gawd, did you see it happen? hap-pen? One minute he's just sitting there havin' a brew and the next he's flat on his back." "It all happened so fast," chimed in another voice. , for W A jump kit contains various medical equipment the EMTs use in an emergency situation, photos by Neal Palumbo :;V -X , y f. : :; ; 1 V . - V hy' l '-kTf. ' I ' . , . The "Jaws of Life" tool can be used to extricate an individual from a car accident. ' ''amymmi Ull mamtmi "'.. ...iin v fmsn . v . i ..?'.? Digges and Berg are shown with their equipment. |