First Aid Corps

Alan Barney was able to sit up over a plate of spaghetti in his Saint Mary’s Hospital room Tuesday, hoping to spend Thanksgiving at home with his two sons, thanks to three employees at Reno Concrete Inc.

Barney, 58, a technician with the city of Reno’s public works department since 1999, was cutting roots for a project off of Robb Drive last week while the contractors with the concrete company were working nearby.

“Alan was bent down, he was sawing on a root and told our guys that ‘I’m getting too old for this,’” said Mike Popejoy, the owner of Reno Concrete, on Tuesday. “Then, he just passed out and fell backward.”

That’s when Raul Castillo, Bill Nagel and Jose Garcia started CPR and got one of the defibrillators stashed away in one of their work trucks. First responders arrived about a minute later, Popejoy said.

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them,” Barney said from his hospital room. “Their guys showed up and saved my cookies.”

It wasn’t the first time Reno Concrete had faced a life-threatening situation. One of their employees suffered a heart attack three years ago, resulting in the company buying the defibrillators and training everyone how to use them, Popejoy said.

“You don’t think you’re ever going to use it,” he said. “But it was sure nice to have.”

After the heart attack, Barney woke up a couple of days later with tubes running into his body while his two sons, Justin, 18, and Ryan, 21, stayed by his side.

Barney had triple bypass surgery Saturday but was hoping to leave the hospital by Wednesday. And while he’s not sure about Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, his sons said they’ll likely delay their holiday dinner by a couple weeks to let their father recuperate.

Barney said he’s now thinking about retirement after nearly 33 years of public service, including jobs in Lassen County, Calif., and with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

And as families sit down around table to say what they’re thankful for this week, Justin Barney said that’s an easy question to answer: The men and the machine that helped save his father’s life.

“I think Reno should increase more of the defibrillators in the contractor trucks,” he said. “Because if it wasn’t there, he wouldn’t be here right now.”

The young man lay on the ground, his body having just received a jolt of 13,800 volts of electricity from a power line.

Craig Nedell, Robert Mancinelli & Jerry Wainio the Saviours

He had no pulse.

He was lifeless.

Angel Caguana, 23, of Brockton and another roofer had been struck by an electrical current when a ladder they were moving off a house in Bridgewater fell back and came in contact with nearby utility wires.

Fire Lt. Robert Mancinelli, who was among the first emergency crews to arrive on the scene, said Caguana had no pulse.

“I’ve never had anything this serious,” Mancinelli, a 24-year fire veteran, recalled later.

Mancinelli, 47, and firefighters Jerry Wainio, 32, and Craig Nedell, 46, worked on Caguana with a defibrillator, which gives a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the heart to start it beating again.

As bystanders watched, the rescue workers shocked Caguana once with the defibrillator and administered CPR for about five minutes before they finally got a pulse, fire officials said. All three are paramedics.

Wainio said he has worked on “a lot of people” and “most don’t come back (with a pulse).”

Caguana “was really young and that’s a huge contributing factor. He actually left here with a pulse and breathing on his own,” Wainio said.

Caguana, still unconscious, was picked up by a medical helicopter at the St. Thomas Aquinas Church parking lot on Center Street and flown to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with serious injuries.

The hospital could not provide a condition for him on Wednesday. The Fire Department said Wednesday evening that he is in serious condition, but would probably not sustain any permanent neurological damage. However, he did suffer some severe burns, according to the Fire Department.

John Porter at the NewPage Duluth paper mill said a few thank-yous to some co-workers Tuesday.

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Nothing big, they just saved his life is all.

Porter, 55, was at work in the mill’s control room July 6 when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. He doesn’t remember the heart attack, but he remembers waking up in the hospital and being told that his co-workers had saved his life using their training and an automatic external defibrillator.

“I’ll never look at these guys the same way again,” Porter said.

The saviours included Tiffany Johnson, Nevada Torrence, Cathy Baker, Steve Blank, Tim Morris, Steve Ratte, Lonnie Simonson, Richard Swanson, Bryan Blazejak, Jay Pederson and Matt King.

Two men shocked by 11,000 volt power lines in Auckland yesterday were smoking, badly burnt and barely alive when rescuers reached them.

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The men, aged 41 and 50, were erecting metal flagpoles outside the Bic office in Normanby Rd, Mt Eden when contact was made with the lines about 1.30pm.

It is believed one pole slipped from the back of their truck on to the powerlines, sending electricity surging through the truck.

Witnesses heard a boom and saw a flash. Power was abruptly cut to about 204 homes and businesses in the area.

One of the men was in a critical condition in Middlemore Hospital’s burns unit last night while the other was in a stable condition at Auckland City Hospital. It was possible he would need to be transferred to Middlemore also.

Among the first on the scene were Rua Roberts, 36, and Kevin Nicholson who were in an Auckland City Mission delivery van when they came across the incident.

“We saw one of the workers lying on his back on the side of the road next to the truck. We dragged him across the road because of the cables – we thought they might drop everywhere.”

Mr Nicholson saw the other man on the other side of the truck. His jeans were still on fire so he grabbed a water bottle from their truck and poured it on the man’s burning legs.

He then returned to the first man and began CPR while Mr Roberts supported him and watched for traffic. He feared the man was dying in front of him.

“He was pretty much gone. He was pale, really pale.”

Andy McGregor the Saviour

Others joined them, including physiotherapist Andy McGregor who ran from his clinic across the road with a defibrillator.

“He used it on him. He vomited after the first shock and they continued doing CPR and he came through … He was on and off a few times there. He’d breathe a little bit and then flat-line.”

He said a lot of people tried to help and it definitely gave the men a chance to survive.

Mr McGregor told 3 News he followed the instructions on the defibrillator because he’d never used one before.

“I had a defib kit so I put that on him and followed the instructions and then yeah, it kicked off,” he said.

“We kept doing CPR on him and we just kept going until the ambulance arrived.”

It was the first time he’d used the machine after being trained by St John to use it only months earlier.

Ryan Prasad, 39, saw one man lying on his side. “He was still burning. I could see smoke and flames coming from him.”

The man was lying on his side making groaning sounds as those around him tried to keep him alive.

“They were telling him to keep breathing,” Mr Prasad said. The man had bad burns to his legs and hands and his clothes appeared ripped.

The rear left tyre of their truck was burnt as was the grass around it where the electricity earthed.

A spokesperson from Vector Energy, Sandy Hodge, said the men appeared to have been backing a truck with a large structure on the back which hit powerlines.

A contractor doing electrical work at the Lawrence Township Department of Public Works facility was electrocuted this afternoon (Friday, July 8), but coworkers, township police officers and emergency medical personnel teamed up to restart the man’s heart and restore his breathing, township police department spokesman Lt. Charles Edgar confirmed.

The contractor, 24-year-old Zaed Quituqa of Haledon, was listed in critical condition at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton this evening, he said.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) initiated by Quituqa’s coworkers and continued by Officer Shawn Carroll and Sgt. Michael Yeh, along with the use by the police officers of an automated external defibrillator (AED), was credited with saving Quituqa’s life, Edgar said.

Standing on the elevated platform of a scissor-type lift, Quituqa and a coworker from I & T Electrical Lighting of Paterson were working on overhead lights in the public works garage in the 200 block Bakers Basin Road when the accident happened about 3:15 p.m., Edgar said.

Police are still investigating exactly what happened, he said, but somehow Quituqa came in contact with electricity.

When his coworker realized Quituqa was being shocked, the coworker used his foot to kick Quituqa clear of the lighting and anything else he might have been touching, such as the metal rails for one of the garage’s overhead doors, according to Edgar. The coworker was not hurt, he said.

The coworker quickly lowered the lift and he and others moved Quituqa from the lift to the floor. He was not breathing and had no pulse at that time, Edgar said.

While a public works employee dialed 911 to request assistance, he said, Quituqa’s coworkers started CPR.

Carroll and Yeh soon arrived. Confirming that Quituqa was in cardiac arrest, they connected a defibrillator to Quituqa and delivered an electrical pulse to his body in the hope the targeted shock would jumpstart his heart into beating correctly again, Edgar said. After the delivering the shock, Carroll and Yeh resumed CPR.

After about two minutes of them performing CPR, Quituqa’s heart began beating again and he started to breathe, he said.

Lawrence Township Emergency Medical Service personnel and paramedics from Capital Health System then arrived to take over patient care. They quickly bundled Quituqa into an ambulance and rushed him to the hospital in Trenton.