By EMS1 Staff
BRITISH COLUMBIA — A paramedic helping fight massive wildfires in British Columbia ran into the heart of a blazing forest to treat a firefighter who could not be extricated.
Cape Breton Post reported that Jennifer Jesty was 10 days into a three-week trip to help extinguish the fires when her dispatcher told her a female firefighter had broken an ankle deep in the forest and could not be moved.
“It was literally like the scene from a movie. It was hard to believe that this was really happening to me,” Jesty said. “There’s a helicopter flying overhead. There were literally trees torching on either side of me, so there was open flame.”
When Jesty arrived, firefighters had created a makeshift stretcher with the sleeves of their shirts and branches in order to move the victim. Her ankle was braced with a chainsaw guard.
“When I got there it was kind of surreal. There’s a helicopter flying above and I’m down on my hands and knees, doing my assessment, starting my IV. I’m giving morphine to make the patient more comfortable for extrication. And it happened so fast – the helicopter is landing for me to put her in, and they flew her and I out to the hospital.”
Jesty, who returns home to Novia Scotia soon, said the incident was the “call of her career.”
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