Severe burn victim

Last friday I was working at home and we get called out to St. Joseph's Blvd. for an activated fire alarm. In the past, we've encountered many situations where a typical "fire alarm" or "carbon monoxide alarm" turns into something much more. Sometimes while driving to the false alarm we'll even get paged out to an actual working car or structure fire. This is why I make every attempt to make all alarms, cause you never know.

Anyway, upon arrival I heard a bunch of chatter on the radio but couldn't tell what the Chief was saying. Getting off the truck, something felt odd. I asked John, who was riding in the officer's seat, what was up but he didn't know. Then the Chief says "check upstairs, we might have a burn victim." Walking up the stairs, there was no alarm going off but there was an odd smell of burning, maybe food on the stove.

Walking into the kitchen, an elderly man, maybe around 60 years old, was laying on the floor holding his obviously burned arm. When I looked closer, the back of his head was burned very bad, his right arm was charred with the black skin actually rolling off it already, and his right side and back were burnt up pretty bad. Whatever burnt him also burnt away half his shirt and some of the top of his pants.

I threw my coat, hood, Scott pack and tools to the side and put on latex gloves. Then I helped another crew member prop the victim up onto a chair before cutting the rest of his shirt and pants off. He was very aware and told us his shirt caught fire while cooking. Then his son chimed in and said he heard the alarm going off and when he walked in, his dad was on the floor, non responsive and on fire. The man at this point wasn't feeling pain yet and trying to convince us he didn't need to go to the hospital. My buddy explained that the pain didn't hit yet but will soon, and boy was he right.

As I'm scanning the man's body, I'm noticing his arm won't move, the skin was charred black and rolling off and in some spots, charred so deep that it was pink, almost red with the blood being that close to the surface. Then the man went into shock, something I've never seen before. His eyes became wide, he looked up and became non-responsive. I thought personally that he was having a heart attack and I got very nervous. Someone ran downstairs for the backboard while we yelled, trying to get the guy's attention (unsuccessfully.) When the backboard came, we unwrapped it in lightning speed and put the man on it, when one of our guys and the Chief proceeded to bring him down to the stretcher as fast as they could. All the while, his wife was screaming "he's dying, he's dying."

They treated him on the ambulance and brought him to the burn center, where now I hear his condition worsened and he might not make it. Just goes to show that even "typical" and "standard procedure" alarms can often turn out to be much more.