Hurricane Helene brought along numerous medical emergencies, including some that tested the limits of emergency medical rescue.
On the day of the storm, Cathy Smith was having trouble breathing and needed an emergency trip to the hospital. Her daughter, Commissioner Catherine Smith McKnight, said they decided to call for an ambulance.
With Walton Way and side streets littered with fallen trees and power lines, Central EMS knew it wasn’t going to be an easy pickup.
Jacob Hansen, a manager with Central, would undertake one of numerous challenging rescues Central encountered in areas hit hardest by the storm, Central CEO Gary Coker told Augusta commissioners Tuesday.
The western end of Walton Way, where Smith lives on a side street, was among areas of Augusta that experienced heavy damage.
Hansen “tried every way to get in. There were trees down on every road, every entrance, every way,” Coker said.
So Hansen opted to park the ambulance by First Baptist Church and come in on foot, he said.
“He took his oxygen bottle and his medical aid kit and hiked in over six-tenths of a mile,” Coker said. “He climbed over two huge downed trees, a lot of downed power lines and got to the patient, administered to her, gave her breathing treatments, gave her oxygen,” Coker said.
Then, Hansen said, “I’ll be back, and he left out on foot,” Coker said.
Hansen came back out and got an ambulance team, which brought in a stretcher by hand then carried Smith out, by hand, back to the ambulance still parked at First Baptist, Coker said.
Central is “heroes in my eyes and to many others,” McKnight said. As the Category 2 hurricane swept through Augusta, Hansen took the call and delivered, she said.
“He took the stretcher all the way to her house with fallen debris everywhere. Trees blocking the roads and her driveway. He was able to get my mother out. He and his crew were somehow another by the grace of God able to navigate in the pitch black dark their way and get her safely to the hospital,” McKnight said.
“My mother is just one of many who were saved that night. My family and I are beyond grateful for the professionalism that Jacob Hansen has shown,” she said.
While the dramatic rescue made Hansen a hero in many people’s book, it was not an isolated incident, Coker said.
“This same story happened over and over and over and over and over again throughout this county,” Coker said. “They did a heroic job while dozens of (their) own families and houses were in trouble.”
Eight staffers’ home were so damaged they had to find another place to stay, he said. “They never missed a beat.”
The firm that came for Augusta’s emergency last year when its other provider suddenly backed out, again was stepping up for a city at great risk, Coker said.
“We had a catastrophe, sir, I came,” he said.
The storm also destroyed Central’s Wrightsboro Road headquarters, he said, and staff had to create a makeshift center with generators, fuel and water tankers and four RVs, he said. “We basically called that Camp Helene,” he said.
Other heroes of the time included a woman who said Central had saved her husband’s life, who brought food to the workers, and several food service providers who fed staff – who had no ready supply of food yet had to work – for free or at a big discount, Coker said.
Another hero included a Central worker who tended to medically fragile residents in apartments after her shift, and a woman for whom it was her first day on the job, he said.
Central would handle about 1,500 calls after the storm, a 50% increase, he said.
It was possible through the teamwork of all the city’s agencies, from E-911 who ensured true emergency calls were dispatched first to firefighters who arrived first and removed blocking debris, he said.
