By SCOTT D. JOHNSTON
Ocean Shores first responders are credited with saving the life of a man who suffered a potentially fatal heart attack while driving down Duck Lake Drive last week.
Fire Chief David Bathke said local police officers Tony Viera and Kellen Church responded to a vehicle accident call at 1:14 p.m. Friday, March 9, to find a male in his 60s who “was having a medical event (and) was in full arrest – his heart was stopped.”
The OSPD officers started CPR, hooked up the department’s new defibrillator, recently acquired with grant money, and gave the victim multiple shocks. Fire Department paramedics and EMTs took over CPR, delivered cardiac drugs through an IV and inserted a breathing tube. After more CPR and more defibrillator shocks, the patient’s heart began beating again.
He was rushed to Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen for stabilization and then transferred immediately to Olympia St. Peters cardiac catheterization lab. The entire ambulance run and return to Ocean Shores took the crew about six hours.
Responding from OSFD were Firefighters Cody Sage, Jeremy Towery and Jack Thompson, Captain Brian Ritter and Inspector Curt Begley, manning an ambulance and fire truck.
As this event transpired, another ambulance call came in, pushing the Fire Department to its staffing limits.
“We had back-to-back calls going out,” Bathke explained. “It’s a good thing we had additional staff…. If it weren’t for the proactive support of the City Council in raising the ambulance utility rate, we wouldn’t have had enough staff on.”
In December, the Council approved a utility rate increase with a projected monthly cost to ratepayers of $19.03, an increase of $11.55 over the pervious rate. That fee is included on city water bills, and the first with the ambulance utility increase went out last week.
“I would like to commend Officers Viera and Church, and my staff from the Ocean Shores Fire Department,” Bathke said. “They are an excellent bunch of guys who always follow our mission, vision and values” and function as “an extension of the physician’s hands out there in the field.” That’s critically important in areas like Ocean Shores and the North Coast, he noted, because “we’re 30 to 45 minutes away from a medical facility that can stabilize a patient, then another hour away from level one service.
“Without the level of training and dedication of our guys, there are a lot of our residents and visitors that wouldn’t make it” through life-threatening medical emergencies, he said. “These are high performing individuals, and I’m really proud of the work they do.”
