Our tax dollars at work

On the way back from the supermarket this evening, I was delayed by a tie up in a major intersection. The tie up was caused by an apparently stalled car in the intersecting turn lane. As I pulled up, a cop was parked behind the stall with his emergency lights going. As I started through the intersection, I realized the cop was trying to get into the car and the driver was slumped sideways.

By the time I pulled into the gas station, another driver had handed the officer a crow bar and one of the car windows bit the dust. The officer and his helper pulled the driver out of the car, at which point his car started rolling forward. So the officer dove into the car to jam it into neutral and get it stopped.

By now, the helper had the unconscious driver laying on the pavement. The officer checked the victim for a pulse and ran to get the defibrillator out of his trunk. By the time he had returned to the man’s side and checked his pulse again, the first fire unit was rolling onto the scene. Without anyone shouting orders and in a calm, unhurried but efficient manner, the responders evaluated the victim’s condition, administered oxygen, directed traffic, brought in the paramedic ambulance, strapped the victim to a gurney, communicated his symptoms and treatment to that point, and prepared for transport.

The ambulance took the guy away, the fire truck headed back to the station, and the original cop headed off to another call. The second cop on the scene blocked the lane with his car, turned on his lights and started writing a report while he waited for the tow truck.

All of this happened within very little time. Maybe ten minutes, from the guy passing out to riding off in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. I was impressed.

Make no mistake, there was a lot of luck involved here. Most people can’t count on collapsing in front of a police cruiser, and many cops operate in areas where they would never be within a quarter mile of a fire station and a half mile of a paramedic base. But fortune can cut either way. And those resources were where they were because we as a community came together years ago and decided this sort of first responder infrastructure was worth paying for.

There are a lot of arguments flying back and forth just now about how we organize ourselves to provide for the common weal. I won’t go into the arguments per se. But from my point of view, today everything came together the way we intended.

When we passed the Medic One levees, we couldn’t know this poor schlub would need them so badly tonight at the intersection of 150^th and 38^th. But it was precisely the sort of outcome we would have hoped for.

Sometimes, taxes don’t seem all that bad.