Copyright 2006 The Austin American-Statesman
All Rights Reserved
BY JOSHUNDA SANDERS
Austin American-Statesman (Texas)
On March 7, 2005, Monica Barnes desperately held on to the front of Dirk Hoekstra’s 16-foot fiberglass boat, worried that her friend was dead and that she might be next.
The engine had died, and while the two tried to paddle away from the Tom Miller Dam floodgates, the boat crashed. Hoekstra fell down a 60-foot waterfall into Town Lake and washed ashore without serious injuries. But Barnes was trapped.
Lower Colorado River Authority workers tried in vain to lift her out of the boat with a rope. But Lt. David Brietzke with Austin Fire Station No. 10 decided that using the rope was too risky. He, firefighter Christopher Lafferre and others drove toward the rushing water in a parks police boat, endangering themselves, to pluck Barnes to safety.
“It’s something anyone in this department could have done,” Lafferre said Sunday afternoon at the Austin Fire Department’s awards ceremony honoring heroism in 2005.
Brietzke, now a captain, echoed that sentiment, saying, “I was just lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to help.”
Both were given Medals of Valor, and Engine Company No. 10 received a unit citation during the ceremony at the downtown Hilton Austin.
Others were honored for leading lost children to safety, resuscitating unconscious people and trying to keep house fires under control with garden hoses until firefighters responded.
The Austin Fire Department saluted Jet Hahaffey for bringing a barefoot, lost 3-year-old girl to Firehouse 22 at 5 a.m. Dec. 18.
Austin resident Ronnie Gallardo saw smoke rising from his neighbor’s house and not only went inside the house to wake up the sleeping family, he put a garden hose in the window to control the fire until firefighters got there.
Fire specialist Leo Rios received a certificate of commendation for reviving a 10-year-old boy who’d been swimming behind his family’s boat on Lake Travis and was overwhelmed by carbon monoxide fumes. Rios, who was off duty at the time, saw the boy facedown in the water and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him.
“Every day, 1,000 firefighters go to work knowing that today they might do something extraordinary,” master of ceremonies Lt. Mathew Rush said. “They often do it long after the off-duty light goes on.”
The same thing could be said for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services workers, who were honored in an annual awards ceremony over the weekend. Among those lauded for their contributions as first responders were:
* Paramedics Wendy Craig-Oldbury and Adam Bostick, who received Purple Hearts. On Oct. 9, both were hurt in a head-on collision, but in spite of their injuries, they tried to save the person who had crashed into them.
* Paramedic Marco Villasenor, who received the Medical Director award for his passionate commitment to the art and science of a “clinically sophisticated patient-focused field practice of medicine.”
* Paramedic Sean Norton, who was given a Life Saving citation for providing a surgical airway for a 24-year-old car crash victim who had severe head and face trauma. Without the surgical intervention, officials say, the victim would have died.