By Rich Hewitt
Bangor Daily News
Copyright 2007 Bangor Daily News
CENTERVILLE, Maine — For more than 40 minutes Wednesday, a group of loggers worked to try to save the life of an injured co-worker, all the while following directions from a Washington County dispatcher miles away from the scene.
Dispatcher Cindy Rossi, 47, an EMT and a CPR instructor, followed new emergency medical dispatching procedures to direct the unsuccessful rescue effort, talking by telephone from the Washington County Regional Dispatch to the rescuers at the remote logging site off Hanscom Pit Road in Centerville.
The initial call came from the Guptill Logging headquarters, which relayed information from the scene. That caused some confusion about where the accident had occurred, Rossi said.
“They called from the scene to the employer,” she said. “It went through a couple of different people before we could understand what was happening. People need to know that 911 is there, and that they can call us directly from the scene and we can help them immediately. It saves time, and those minutes count.”
Rossi got the number for a cell phone at the scene and called back to talk directly to the crew there.
“Once we got [connected] to the scene, we could start the emergency medical dispatch process,” she said.
Rossi, a dispatcher for almost six years, was certified in January in the EMD procedure along with other 911 dispatchers at the Washington County RCC. The certification is mandated by the state, and one of the key components of the training is directing cardiopulmonary resuscitation over the phone.
CPR is an emergency technique that involves a combination of chest compression and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for a victim until normal breathing is restored or emergency medical personnel arrive.
“The first thing we had them do was to roll the victim over to determine whether he was breathing,” Rossi said. “Once we knew he wasn’t breathing, we started the EMD protocol.”
The protocol is a series of specific steps the dispatcher follows to direct emergency care at the scene.
“You get the people on the scene to do what you tell them to do,” she said. “It was very intense. This is still a small town. You know everybody. I know the victim. I know the other person [who was driving]. One of the rescuers I think was someone I certified in CPR awhile ago. But all that goes out the door. You just go exactly by the protocol.”
Administering CPR can be a strenuous and stressful process. In addition to directing the CPR process, Rossi had to monitor the well-being of the would-be rescuers.
“Some of them were older men, and I had to rotate them off in order to maintain their care,” she said.
One of the rescuers was under some stress and required medical care after an ambulance arrived on the scene, she said.
The LifeFlight helicopter was called to take the victim to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, but it never landed.
A physician at a Machias hospital, in consultation with an EMT at the scene, determined that the effort, which had gone on for more than 40 minutes, would not be successful.
Although the rescue was unsuccessful, Rossi said, the EMD process works.
“You’ve got to have people on the scene who are willing to get down there and do what you tell them to,” she said. “The people on the scene were incredible. It worked like clockwork. The system works.”