In what is likely a first for Greater Sudbury, the quick action of four female paramedics rescued a woman from a burning building last week.
The four – Jennyfer Leblanc, Chanelle Frappier-Doyon, Samantha Mclean and Susan Easter – happened to be in the right place at the right time. They had responded to a medical call late afternoon Nov. 2 in a Minnow Lake neighbourhood. They were just wrapping up when they noticed smoke billowing from a nearby two-storey apartment.
Normally, four paramedics don't respond to calls, but in this case, one of them – Frappier-Doyon – was on a back-to-work protocol, so she was travelling with Leblanc and McLean. Easter, a senior paramedic, had arrived separately to make contact with the original patient.
When they spotted the fire, Frappier-Doyon approached the burning building to assess the situation.
“I went over to inspect,” she said, when she heard a woman groaning, “Oh no! oh no!”
“I didn't see her (but) I could see flames all over the backyard,” Frappier-Doyon said.
By that time, her colleagues were coming toward her with fire extinguishers, while one stayed to care for the original patient.
“Then I looked up and I noticed that the whole second-floor apartment window was completely engulfed in flames,” Frappier-Doyon said. “So I started running back, yelling at my partners that those extinguishers are not going to do it.”
They called the EMS dispatch to let them know what was happening, “that it was no longer a backyard fire but a building structure fire.”
Mclean went to neighbouring townhouses to tell them to evacuate, and kept the gathering crowd at a safe distance from the fire.
By this time, they could see through the window that the woman had run back inside her bottom floor apartment.
“We saw the woman inside run towards the front window, yelling at us to help her,” Frappier-Doyon said. “She was disoriented because the whole place was completely engulfed in flames and smoke.
“We yelled at her to open the window, which she did, and then (Easter) ripped the screen off and grabbed her by the arms and just pulled her out of the window, brought her to safety and started taking care of her and her injuries.”
“Then (Greater Sudbury Fire Services) showed up, and we were like, 'it's all yours.' ”
In addition to saving the woman and evacuating the buildings, they helped save several pets, putting them in vehicles out of harm's way.
"Well, you know people don't want to evacuate their apartments without their pets,” Leblanc said. “So we kind of helped them get the pets to safety, as well."
The cause of the fire was a candle. The damage is estimated at $300,000 and displaced five people living in the eight-unit building. Because of privacy laws, the paramedics don't know how the woman fared after she was sent to hospital.
"She was exposed to a lot of smoke,” Leblanc said. “That's pretty much all we know. She was handed off to one of our transporting units that came to carry the patients.
“It's really it's good to have the privacy (laws), but it's also kind of sad that sometimes we don't get to know how our patients are doing.”
But being able to make a difference – and save lives – attracted them to the profession in the first place, they said. And they are all good in pressure-filled, stressful situations.
"We don't know if we weren't there, if things would've went differently, but it is rewarding to at least try to make a difference in people's lives on a daily basis,” Leblanc said. “We were four female paramedics on scene and there was no arguing, no confusion. Everybody grabbed an end of the stick and got everyone to safety.
"And to have four paramedics on scene is really unheard of,” Mclean said. “And to have four female advanced care paramedics is REALLY unheard of."
“I've always liked medicine,” Frappier-Doyon said, on why she entered the field. “And I just happened to, while living my normal life, come upon these crazy accidents that I seem to handle very well. One day someone mentioned, 'well, you should try being a paramedic.' So I did and I love it."
“I wanted to do something that would make a difference in people's lives,” Leblanc said, about her decision. “I wanted to be able to punch in and do something different every single day.
“So every day we show up, we don't know what's going to come. A lot of people think that we see traumatic stuff all day, day in and out, but there's a lot of really amazing stories. There's a lot of really good happy endings that we see on a daily basis and that is so gratifying. Quite honestly, that's the reason why I do this and why I chose to do it."
“You have to be able to be empathetic and situations that most people may not be,” Frappier-Doyon added. “You have to be able to think quickly on your feet because dynamics everything's changing at once. You never know really what's going to happen.”
In Sudbury, 42 per cent of paramedics are women, a sign of how the profession is changing. Do they consider themselves role models for young women considering the field?
"Well, gone are the days where women weren't strong enough, gone are the days where women weren't smart enough,” Leblanc said.
“We definitely are equal in this field. As far as being role models, if some young girl out there feels like she's a leader and she wants to make a difference in someone's life -- and she can also manage crisis situations and has a little bit of a knack for adrenaline – then, yeah. Sure.”
