“I don’t really know the statistics on cases like these, but I would say that’s a once in a career experience for most firefighters,” Athens Fire and Rescue Deputy Chief Jesse Knox said of the emergency call that culminated in his crew helping to deliver a newborn girl on Friday, July 26.
According to the Athens Fire Department, the A-shift Engine No. 1 and Battalion No. 1 were sent to a possible labor on Friday morning. Upon arriving, crews found the female had just given birth to a baby girl.
“We were just thinking about everything that needed to be done,” Levi Smith, Engine No. 1 crew member, told The News Courier Friday. “We’re trained for those kinds of calls; we keep bags specifically for childbirth on the truck for those calls, so we were just going through the normal procedure.”
Smith, along with his fellow Engine No. 1 crew members Hunter Campbell and Joel Evans, were the ones who tended to the baby and the mother once arriving at the scene.
Campbell said the firefighters must complete about 40 hours of Emergency Medical Technician training every two years. Childbirth and infancy care is a part of the required basic curriculum training.
“We get dispatched to calls like that all the time, so we need to be trained on it,” Ryan Kiser, firefighter, said. “Usually when we get there, it’s either someone who thinks they are in labor or just going into it.”
The rarity of the situation did not stop the firefighters from immediately jumping into action. The three crew members worked to suction the airway of the newborn before they clamped and cut the umbilical cord.
The Engine No. 1 crew then wrapped the baby in a towel and observed the baby’s condition before and they let the mother hold her.
“We did a full assessment of the mother and the baby,” Smith said. “Like I said, everybody on the truck is an EMT, so we were able to make sure both vitals were where they needed to be.”
EMS transported both the baby and the mother to Athens-Limestone Hospital, giving the crew members a chance to take in what they just accomplished.
“We were all just kind of shocked, because usually those calls are not always what they are paged to be,” Campbell said. “It all just fell into motion and it was back to work as usual after that.”