By Rob Johnson
The Roanoke Times
Copyright 2008 The Roanoke Times
ROANOKE, Va. — Even for Adam Fleming, a Roanoke firefighter and emergency services technician, most workdays are routine. Tedium is a big part of the territory.
Consider the call to which he responded on Tuesday morning two hours after he and three colleagues received a plaque at the annual American Red Cross Celebration of Heroes breakfast for a rescue in June. “It was just a broken sprinkler system” at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center — the site of the award ceremony. “We cleaned the water and put blankets down on some computers so they wouldn’t get damaged. It’s all part of the job,” he said.
The times when extraordinary efforts are called for often occur when least expected. For example, the heroism award in the Red Cross’ law enforcement category went to four officers who intervened in a domestic violence dispute and were credited with saving the lives of a mother and two of her children.
And a 911 dispatcher was honored for the precious minutes when she realized there wasn’t time to get others to help a caller who was alone deliver her own baby. So Christy Gorth calmly talked the mother through a successful birth. “I was just doing my job and happened to be the one answering the phone,” she said.
In the Red Cross award category called Good Samaritan, heroism is defined as personal sacrifice. The winner, Eli Blevins of Roanoke, donated a kidney to someone he had scarcely met.
The ceremony also recognized people who made a difference in the community over long periods of time, such as Florella Johnson, a newly retired associate superintendent of schools in Franklin County. Her 46-year career began in a one-room, segregated schoolhouse. “I’m just a farm girl,” she said.
She articulated a modesty widely shared by Tuesday’s award winners.
“We’re just regular people,” said James Downing, a member of the Virginia Tech Rescue Squad, which was honored for being among the first responders to the April 16 campus shootings. “We’d all say we were just doing our job that day.”
Fleming’s award stems from an incident that occurred during a normally slow time on the Saturday evening when the firefighter and three colleagues — David Lucas, Alan Mitchell and Jeff Proulx — encountered crisis. About 6:30, all four were halfway through a 24-hour shift and had just delivered patients to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. So ordinary was the workday that none of the firefighters can remember the cases that brought them together by coincidence in the ambulance parking area.
“I had just finished some paperwork on the patient we dropped off when I heard what sounded like an explosion inside an ambulance that had come from West Virginia,” Fleming said. A fire had broken out in the vehicle — apparently when static electricity caused combustion in the close confines of the compartment where a cardiac patient was being transported.
Seeing smoke seep from the ambulance, the four Roanokers grabbed fire extinguishers, flung open the vehicle’s rear doors and pulled the patient to safety.
“It all happened in about 30 seconds,” Proulx said. The patient was unhurt, and the West Virginia ambulance attendant, who was burned and unable to help in the rescue, was treated and released, Fleming said.
Now there’s a bit more of an edge to the emergency workers’ traditional lull right after delivering patients to the hospital. Now when Fleming returns to his ambulance to clean up for his next passenger, he said June 16 often comes to mind. “I think about it. When you’re on duty, anything can happen any time.”
There are typically eight to 10 emergency calls in a 24-hour ambulance shift, Fleming said. He vowed to be ready for more surprise calamities such as the ailing ambulance.
“We all have to be able to handle anything, any time,” including leaky fire-protection sprinklers, he said. “We’re trained for that too.”