It is widely accepted that first responders place themselves in harm’s way every day. And with no less frequency, first responders react to save lives daily, often placing themselves in grave danger. These are selfless acts performed by selfless professionals.
However, during a seven-hour period between Monday night, Feb. 21, and Tuesday morning, Feb. 22, deputies, dispatchers, and fire/medical teams were challenged with reacting to multiple extremely critical incidents and took actions that undoubtedly saved the lives of many.
Shortly after 11 p.m. on Monday, public safety dispatchers relayed critical information to fire and patrol deputies regarding a structure fire in east Carson City. The information relayed included the dangers of the house fully engulfed in fire and the likelihood that a person may be trapped inside.
Three deputies arrived at the scene first and immediately acted to evacuate a trapped victim inside the house without regard to their own risk and safety. Amid raging flames and blanketing smoke, the three officers worked tirelessly together to pass the victim safely out of a window and move him to an area where paramedics would arrive and treat him for serious injuries.
Without the immediate actions of the deputies, a life would surely have been lost in the smoke and flames.
Just hours later, before the work shift would end, deputies were again faced with the critical use of their training and experience to save more lives. As a resident was being attacked by a man wielding weapons that would surely cause serious bodily injury or death, deputies were forced to act. In an instant of readiness, a deputy sheriff successfully stopped the threat at the threshold of imminent critical danger.
Although the innocent bystander was now saved, this left the suspect in immediate critical need of life-saving care. Two deputies took immediate action to treat the suspect’s critical wounds by applying tourniquets and stuffing wounds to stop the critical bleeding until paramedics could arrive. Without the immediate medical attention applied by the deputies, the life of the suspect could likely have been lost at the scene.
While both incidents remain open investigations, it is without question the heroic acts of six deputies, twice in the time span of less than a “shift,” unquestionably saved the lives of three people. The irony here is that the training often received by deputies is frequently tutored by our own fire/paramedics who would ultimately receive and treat the patients.
It is true that first responders are putting their lives on the line every day. Yet the likelihood of two such critical incidents seriously threatening the lives of others during one single law enforcement shift is truly a rare event and worthy of acknowledgement and recognition. The back-to-back repeated actions of the deputies during such a small span of time, during two drastically differing events, are truly an amazing anomaly for such a small community.
Once again, the actions of the first responders during a single shift rise as an iconic example of the level of training, experience, and interagency cooperation that goes on daily in Carson City. In a span of just seven hours, our first responders demonstrated their commitment to working and training together to take on any emergency circumstance. Unified in their responses, each has demonstrated that every life counts in this community and all emergency circumstances are continuously trained and prepared for. Together, our dispatchers, deputies, and fire/medical teams perform acts of great heroism every day, but some days are more demanding than others.
We thank those first responders for their courageous acts of heroism, training and experience in saving the lives of three people in this community in just seven short hours. In this rare occurrence, it wasn’t just another day at the office.
Ken Furlong is Carson City sheriff.
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