The tools of a firefighter go beyond just hoses and ladders. And a daring and complicated rescue might be the last time a crew interacts with someone, whether the outcome is good or bad.
That pressure can be heightened even further when children are involved, since many of D.C.’s first responders have kids of their own.
Members of D.C. Fire and EMS reflected Thursday morning on a particularly dramatic and emotional rescue, coming together to tell the story of how they saved a young girl’s arm earlier this year.
WTOP reported on the story earlier this month while spotlighting Prince George’s County’s Shop With a Cop event. Some firefighters were there, reuniting with a 3-year-old girl who accidentally got her hand stuck in a meat grinder.
It’s a situation the department was well prepared for. This spring, D.C. Fire and EMS Capt. Oleg Pelekhaty went bought a few meat grinders to simulate an industrial accident. Those meat grinders were just like the one that trapped the young girl just months after his purchase.
“The hand was all the way in,” Pelekhaty said. “The fingers were sticking out of the end.”
- Prince George’s Co. firefighters reunite with girl who lost fingers in meat grinder accident, help her shop for Christmas
- ‘I wanted some toys very bad’: Kids shop with a cop in Prince George’s Co.
Firefighters rushed her to the hospital, where the girl would undergo a daring operation — one not done by doctors, but by firefighters themselves.
At the hospital, Pelekhaty said doctors were discussing amputating the girl’s arm from above the elbow. Having trained for a scenario just like this one, he quickly spoke up with a different idea.
“From our experience with this kind of training, we knew exactly what the inside of that machine looked like,” he said. “We knew exactly what the extent of the damage actually was, and that it was much more salvageable in there than they believed.”
Thanks to their training, Pelekhaty’s crew members were already on the same page. Firefighter Dave Jenkins got out a DeWalt three-in-one saw and needed about 20 minutes to cut through the metallic grinder.
Pelekhaty assured doctors in the hospital they were prepared for this exact moment.
“I actually drew them a diagram and showed them some photos from that drill, and said, ‘This is a solvable problem,’” he said. “We know how to solve it. We have the equipment and the expertise.”
Running a saw through metal wrapped around a child’s arm carries significant risk. But Jenkins said “the consequence of failure was less than if we didn’t do anything.”
“Us not removing it would mean that she would lose more of her arm,” he added.
Four firefighters were involved in cutting through the grinder. One had to hold the meat grinder, one had to hold the girl’s arm and another had to pour water over the blades Jenkins was using so it wouldn’t overheat.
“Everyone’s there to support Dave,” firefighter Wayne Reed said. “That’s the way that this moves pretty smooth, is if everyone takes their assignment perfectly.”
While the crew had simulated those actions, the emotions of the moment were more difficult to prepare for.
“All of us are dads. All of us have our own kids,” Reed said. “We’re all looking at that child going, ‘Well, if that was my daughter, I want to make sure my cuts are perfect. I want to make sure that I’m doing everything I can.’”
The specified training exercise that gave firefighters the confidence to carry out such a technical operation is part of something called “Squad Saturday,” during which members of the city’s three rescue squads gather every week to train for what they call “low-frequency, high-risk calls.”
“When the call came out and said meat grinder, ‘Oh my gosh, like we did this two months ago,’” said Nick Dalboe, recounting what was going through his mind. “This is weird.”
And well before Pelekhaty mapped out to doctors in the operating room what his crew would do to save the girl’s arm, several of those responding did the exact same thing on the way to the hospital.
“To Capt. Pelekhaty’s credit, he’s the one that sold the confidence in those doctors for us to be able to do it,” Dalboe said.
For all the praise Pelekhaty got from his colleagues — and there was a lot — he was just as generous with his praise for Prince George’s County Police Sgt. Rachael Jacob, who applied a tourniquet on the girl’s arm, something that’s been described as a lifesaving intervention.
He also commended the maligned D.C. Office of Unified Communications for coordinating with police and fire companies from multiple jurisdictions, as well as Children’s National Hospital.
“That’s a lot of people doing the right thing and making that work,” Pelekhaty said. “Sometimes we train for things that we may never encounter in our career. And to do this specific training, and then two months later, have the same crew come together and get to use that training to make a difference. I’ve never had that reward come around that quickly before.”
The county’s Shop With a Cop event in December was the first time those who responded that June day got to see images of the little girl since the accident. Some of them got emotional watching her use her left arm to carry toys into a shopping cart, knowing she very nearly lost it only six months ago.
Seeing the most positive outcome possible was an unusual conclusion to a lot of their calls.
“To say that it’s rewarding, I think underplays it a little bit,” said Pelakhaty, who himself is the father of a three-year-old. “It’s validating. We spend so much time and energy, and time away from our families, and this really brings home why we do all of that stuff.”
He added that “if you can imagine it, we’ve trained for it. When, everything goes wrong, people are going to call 911, and the fire department’s going to show up.”
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
