FROM ROUTINE TO RESCUE: CARNEGIE HEROES FACE DEADLY PERILS
Carnegie heroes face situations that are surprisingly familiar to all of us, just vastly more dangerous. The latest batch of Carnegie Hero awards involve three rescues of children who survived serious car wrecks, and subsequent fires, probably thanks to their car seats. But those same car seats can make it much harder to get the child out of the damaged and burning car. All of us have struggled to get children out of car seats. It can be very hot, we’re running late, and maybe the little darlings are feeling a bit cranky. Stress! But now add this to the mix: Turn the car upside down. Bend the frame so the doors won’t open. Then set the whole thing on fire.
This jarring jump from the happily normal to the potentially fatal, all in just a few seconds, is one of the things that makes the stories of the Carnegie heroes both terrifying and exciting. The victims in peril see their lives change in a split second. So do the heroes.
In the cases involving burning cars, those families never expected to be waylaid from their trip to the mall or their grandmother’s home. The Carnegie heroes who eventually came to their aid left home in the morning without thinking of fire, twisted metal, or the cries of the injured. The lives of the rescuers go from normal to nuts at a speed that has to be disorienting. The rescuers must decide whether to try a potentially fatal rescue, but they must do it subject to serious disorientation and with little time to weigh options. Yet they do indeed do it.
Professionals can train to deal with emergencies, and they count on that training to keep them effective when dealing with the unexpected.
The three recent Carnegie heroes who rescued children from car seats had no such training to help them. I had the privilege of meeting a small group of policemen who responded to a shooting episode at an institution. The few officers who arrived almost simultaneously did not wait for backup or a SWAT team. They plunged through the door of the building and almost immediately shot and killed the shooter. When they came through the door there were unfamiliar circumstances: the air was thick with smoke from the shooter’s weapon, the floor was slippery from the victim’s blood and the surprisingly strong smell of the blood was unsettling. Nevertheless, they stuck to their training and stopped the shooter before he could kill again. Their department’s doctrine and intensive training served them well when they encountered unexpected factors.
The three Carnegie heroes who rescued children from burning cars had no such training. They were heavy equipment operator A.J. Slater, carpet cleaner Alec Christian Larson, and a maintenance worker Troy White. Good jobs, but no preparation for what they faced. Yet none of them hesitated.
When I read a Hero Fund case report, the first thing I do is check whether the rescuer survived the rescue. It’s an emotional twitch of mine…I just have to know before I read the case. Happily, all three of these rescuers survived. In one case, though, one of the victims did not. The rescuer extricated one child and returned repeatedly for another, even as the smoke and fire grew more intense. It was to no avail. The stress of the unexpected emergency and the perils of the rescue itself combine with the occasional tragic outcomes for rescuers and victims to make the acts of our Carnegie heroes all the more impressive. Let us never forget their special contribution to our common good.