I joined the Elida Fire Department when I was only fourteen years old. When I was fifteen, I took my first classes on firefighting. I had been a volunteer and/or professional fire fighter for twenty-one years when I left Portales, NM to move to Fort Worth, TX in 1995.
During that time, I had only had one workman’s comp claim. An on the job injury which involved a broken wrist suffered during an on-duty ping pong match. I was going for a slam, but miscalculated and knocked the table down. Somehow, as we (the table and I) fell, my wrist wound up underneath the edge of the table. Anyway, more about that later.
After living in Fort Worth and serving in churches for seventeen years, Sara and I left our home for the Texas Panhandle and our new home of Hartley. After a year or so in Hartley, I decided it was time to go back into firefighting and EMS.
The number one rule they teach you is to protect yourself at all costs!
Now, I don’t mean to diminish the many acts of heroism that many of my brethren and sisteren (sp?) firefighters have performed over the years. Saving lives and property is what we live for. And it’s really special when it works right and that happens!
But sometimes, we are our own worst enemy! On July 1, 2014, my sleep was disturbed somewhere around 6:00 a.m. with the rapid BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP sound of my pager going off. “Hartley Fire Department, Hartley Fire Department, you are needed for a hay fire at the . . . . . . . .”
I elected not to move. My wife, on the other hand, was anxious to get me out the door. When I arrived at the station, only Jeromy was there. We suited up in our gear, jumped in a fire truck and headed out. It was early, so the small talk, was small.
After we were at the fire for a short time we were joined by three other Hartley units as well as fire trucks from two other departments. Jeromy and I had staked out our territory and had begun knocking the flames down.
For those of you who are unaware, most hay fires are caused by spontaneous combustion. It happens when the hay gets too moist and once it is bailed, it slowly begins to decompose. If too much moisture is present, the process of decomposing with the added ingredient of moisture cause the bails of hay to vigorously over heat. Once the over heating evaporates the unneeded leftover moisture, the hay catches fire.
Because of this process, one cannot really put out a hay fire. What we can do, is protect the non burning hay and the building the hay is in. In our case, this was a pole barn. We knock the flames down, allowing the farm hands to use heavy machinery to move the bails (which weigh around 2,000 pounds each) out of the barn and place them somewhere where they can spontaneously combust without causing harm to anything else.
After we had been fighting the fire for two and a half or three hours, taking turns on the hose and the pumps, an unusual event took place. Some of the hay had begun to fall. The bales were stacked four high and I was on the hose. At one point, I decided to move my inch and a half line in order to get a better angle of attack. But my hose was snagged! I traced the hose back around a corner of the hay stack and found that four bales, stacked one on top of the other and all on fire, had fallen on my hose!
Actually, only one bale was on the hose, but it was still too heavy for me to be able to move the hose. I was wearing full protective bunker gear, but no mask or air pack. Up until this moment, I had been careful to place myself upwind of any smoke. Now, seeing my beloved water hose, pressurized to about 100 psi, trapped beneath a literal ton of hay, I jumped into action.
Without thinking of my own safety, I jumped into the barn (they tell you in class to always think of your own safety) and grabbed a portion of the hose near the bale. I began to pull. Then I began to yank! Then, I began to think that this was not working because the hose hadn’t moved at all.
So, without a mask or an air pack, I grabbed another firefighter to help me. As she attempted to pull the hose, I frantically began to shred the bale, flinging chunks of hay out of the way.
Did I mention the fact that the hay was on fire while I was doing this? There are a handful of probable outcomes for this scenario, but in the end, it worked! After lessening the weight of the bail enough, the volunteer firefighter helping me was able to pull the hose free . . . . and I hadn’t actually started a fire somewhere where I shouldn’t have! God was certainly watching over the situation!
Looking back, that is not the last time that I recognized God’s providence in that day of my life! After returning to the nozzle and spraying water for a few more minutes, I realized that the heat I had been enduring, coupled with the extreme straining and rapid activity, had taken it’s toll. I was exhausted! I was barely able to hold on to the nozzle. So putting down my ego, along with the nozzle, I returned to fire truck for relief sooner than I thought I should.
I sat down on the back of the fire truck to monitor the pump and the water level of the tank which was being fed by a large tanker from another department. After drinking a bottle of water and sitting there for about ten minutes or so, I began to notice a couple of things: The pain had subsided. But I was getting worse. My vision suddenly faded to black and then returned.
I don’t consider myself a genius, but I did recognize that loosing one’s vision is not normal–even if it is for just a few seconds. I was feeling very tired and weak, and decided that I was overheated. I spotted Jeromy and waved him over to tell him that I needed to go sit in the truck. I thought I would remove my coat, sit in the air conditioned cab, relax, drink some more water, admit defeat and begin recuperating.
Instead, I stood up and became very dizzy. I asked Jeromy to assist me to the cab. Instead, he apparently assisted me to the ground. I was out! I eventually came to and as I woke up, I noticed a handful of faces all staring at me. I didn’t really care, but it just seemed a bit bizarre. After sitting there on the ground for a few moments, I realized that I was reclining against Jeromy. I don’t know how he got back there.
Almost suddenly, I was wide awake and feeling better! I was sitting in and surrounded by a great deal of mud created by the leaking hose connections of the various fire trucks. I overheard someone ask, “How are we going to get him to the ambulance?”
Someone answered, “We’ll bring a backboard over here and carry him.”
I spoke up, feeling much better, but still not quite right and volunteered to walk (with assistance) to the ambulance.
After arriving at the ambulance, I began reflecting on the situation and what I could have done differently to have avoided it. The first thing that came to mind was that I should have found a safer, less taxing way to get the hose loose.
The second thing was to remember that when someone volunteers to carry you to the ambulance, let them carry you! When we got to the ambulance, I was done! After being loaded into the ambulance they took my blood pressure and, along with other significant signs, found that I was in shock. I didn’t really care.
I am not one to hurry death along. I’m the least bit suicidal. But at that moment, I knew for certain that I knew my Savior and He was with me! And I really didn’t care if I lived or died. It wasn’t that I wanted to escape the situation or that I was in such excruciating pain. I actually had no pain at all. And I was okay with fighting for life. I’m just saying that I know where I’m heading and on some level, look forward to being there with my Lord!
Not being able to catch my breath was a little disconcerting though. I was sweating heavily, and they couldn’t get me to stop long enough to get the sticky pads on me to do an EKG. When they finally did, It showed that I was having an acute heart attack. Tim was able to start an IV, but wanted a second one. He couldn’t get it. Scott couldn’t either, and they began transporting me to the hospital.
The one IV and a breathing treatment was enough to make me feel much better by the time we arrived at the hospital. An x-ray or two, some lab work and an EKG later, and I was on the way to the airport to be flown to Amarillo. I hate flying, but the flight wasn’t bad and was un-eventful.
Once at the hospital, they quickly moved me to the “Cath” lab where they found two completely blocked arteries. Two stints later and more labs and EKG’s and I was on the way to a room in the Cardiac Care Unit.
I had indeed suffered a massive heart attack, but by the grace of God, I have no residual effects from it! I am still on lifting restrictions due to the incision for the catheter. As I look back, though, I can definitely see the God of Heaven watching after one of His children who was definitely not watching after himself.
First of all, if any one thing had gone differently, I would most likely not be here writing this. If I had made it to the front of the truck, I probably would have died either in the time it would take for someone to check on me, or would have been too far gone to be saved. God’s timing through all of this, left me with a heart that apparently had narrowed arteries, now repaired. And no heart damage, no brain damage, no nothing! The final results could have been dramatically different, but God knew exactly what He was doing. And I’m okay with that!
I credit the overall outcome of my situation to some great firefighters, doctors, and nurses–a whole team of great folks! But I had many, many people praying for me, pleading my case before God Himself as well. Ultimately, my healing was due to the fact that God heard His people and answered their prayers!
The peace that I had all during this is confounding even to me. But I know it did not come from a frantic, last second cry for help. It came from a lasting, growing, love relationship that I’ve had with Jesus Christ since I was nine and is rooted much earlier than that.
My wife Sara has a very similar relationship with Jesus. She heard the pager go off when an ambulance was sent to the fire scene she knew I was at. Sara prayed for whoever was involved, but said she had a feeling it was me. Sara said she knew that everything would be okay because of her relationship with Jesus. She did not know whether I would live or not, but she knew it would be okay. It might be hard, but it would be okay.
Several of my friends have already expressed their relief that I’m okay. Many even seemed to be surprised that I’m as okay as I am. Most seem to reflect that the most important thing is that I made it through the event. The most important thing to me however, is that I was ready to go be with Jesus!
Are you?