Emergency Aid: Mat-Su responders took 1st, 2nd in medical services competition
By Andrew Wellner
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
Copyright 2007 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
WASILLA, Alaska — Mat-Su Emergency responders swept first and second places in the most recent state emergency medical services competition in Anchorage.
Meadow Lakes walked away with first place and Big Lake with second during the competition in early November held as part of the state Department of Health and Social Service’s annual EMS symposium. Big Lake and Meadow Lakes fire departments together make up the borough’s fire District 2 and share an ambulance service.
Friday, Theresa Blazka sat down for an interview at Fire Station 6-5 at Seward Meridian Parkway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway where she works as a temporary office assistant. Blazka and Kendra Sontag were the two-woman champion Meadow Lakes team.
Q. What does an EMS skills contest entail?
A. It’s kind of cool. (There are) three separate skills competitions. One is a medical, you know, where you go in and ... somebody’s got something wrong and you have to figure out what’s wrong with them.
Q. So do they have actors playing the victims?
A. Yeah, exactly. And they have like a role-play thing that they have to go through and they play the part very well.
And then we had a trauma.
The one we had was a snowmachine wreck where they actually put body makeup on to make it look like they have gouges and broke legs.
Q. Awesome.
A. Yeah, it’s really kind of cool.
And then there’s one that they say is just a surprise.
You never know what you’re going to get. And it was another trauma-type. It was a moose attacked a person.
Q. Moose attack? How’d that guy look?
A. They did it with heavy bruising, like a femur break.
He was kind of like bruised up, colored. They didn’t have any bones sticking out but they had a lot of discoloration to where we were like, “Ooh, here’s a spot, pay attention to this.” We had a possible pelvis fracture.
Q. So you size up the patient, then what?
A. We have to simulate start to finish what we do when we arrive on scene. We get them on, we backboard then, we strap them in and then we say, “while we’re en route we’re going to do this that, that, and that; we’re going to monitor, we’re going to call in ...”
Q. So you don’t actually load them into an ambulance?
A. No, we leave them on the floor (laughs).
Q. How close was it to actually being on the job? Did it seem as stressful as going out on a call to, say, a car wreck?
A. Well, a little bit because everybody’s staring at you (laughs). You have that added pressure. But you just kind of have to displace yourself, just like we do on calls; you go into a mode and stay there till you’re done.
You just have to block everybody out.
Q. Was it hard to make-believe?
A. Not really. We do it a lot in our (department) trainings. So we role-play very well.
Q. Have you ever played a victim before?
A. Oh yeah, we’ve all taken our turns.
I’ve been backboarded and loaded, splinted, bandaged.
My whole family is involved; we’re all firefighters, EMS, rescue, everything. My kids are Explorers. So they get to be victims a lot.
Q. Was this your first win or first time competing in a skills competition?
A. Yeah, well this is both, actually, because I’ve only been an EMT for a little over a year. So it was kind of exciting to be new on the block and be able to accomplish that.
Q. Are you going to do more? Are you going to enter again?
A. (District 2) is going to go next year but I’m not sure if it will be the same teams.
We’re just going to help out anybody else that wants to do it. If they need us to (compete), sure, we’ll do it.
Q. What kind of teams did you compete against?
A. We had military. We had people from Kodiak, we had different, all over the state people came into the symposium, and they all brought in a team.
Q. How did you find out you won?
A. We had to go to the banquet.
That was something we weren’t prepared for so none of us had bought tickets. So we had to scramble to get tickets so the four of us could go.
We had no clue. When they started naming off (winners) we were like, “Oh well, it was fun, we had a good time.”
And then they got to Big Lake and we were like, “Wait a minute” (laughs).
And then they called Meadow Lakes for us and it was a shock. We really didn’t expect it.
Q. Your partner at the competition, Kendra Sontag, is she a pretty experienced EMT?
A. She’s a year ahead of me, is all (laughs). But we work a lot together so we’re a really good team. And I think we had that going for us, is that we’re so familiar with how each other works.
Q. You guys tend to pull the same shifts?
A. We try. We go on a lot of the same runs at the same time.
Q. How did you decide to go into the EMT thing?
A. My husband’s been an EMT/firefighter for probably about eight to 10 years. And we moved up here from Wyoming and he got on with District 2 and I started in as just a basic firefighter, you know, to kind of put my foot in there, see if I liked it, and I ended up being an advanced, taking an engineer class.
Q. How do you like the ambulance work?
A. I have a few issues as far as the “ick” factor of ambulance. But it was interesting; the more I got into it, that sort of went away.
The more I got into it the more I just wanted to be as much help to my department as possible. I’m the Explorer advisor for our district, helping the kids learn and giving them a chance. I’ve got both hands and both feet in the department. I love it; it’s what I do.