Center Avenue fire response demonstrated amazing coordination, saved a life
Firefighters and other first responders saved a life last week on Wednesday, April 8, when they responded to a house fire on Center Avenue in Butler where a teenage girl was trapped in an upstairs bedroom.
Because of their clear communication, coordinated effort and hasty reponse, the 16-year-old girl who was trapped is now recovering at an area hospital.
The teenage girl called 911 at around 9:25 a.m. Wednesday to report the fire, but she fell unconscious by the time firefighters arrived.
The urgency was immediately clear. There was no delay. A second alarm was called to bring in off duty firefighters.
Then, under pressure, the dispatchers at Butler County Emergency Services dispatch center relayed the the teen’s location to the fire department.
Firefighters found the girl and carried her down a ladder from a window on the second floor.
The fire was extinguished within 20 minutes of the call, although the house took heavy damage in the emergency.
It’s hard to explain what is happening while watching a fire burn a building, and the response around it. In the case of a serious blaze, dozens of firefighters surround its source, many using hoses and sometimes axes, which breach the walls of a structure and help turn flames to smoke.
Around the action are numerous fire trucks, some with their apparatus folded out so they no longer resemble trucks, but utility sheds, tools and machinery hanging from hooks underneath that firefighters can quickly pull from to address the scene.
It takes coordination, clearly. Consider dispatchers, EMTs and everything happening behind the scenes, and it’s truly remarkable.
And when a fire is as serious as the one Wednesday — a teenager entrapped in the second floor of a burning building — the responders have to act fast to prevent a tragedy. They each have to perform their task efficiently while also avoiding getting in someone else’s way — someone else who has their own task that is necessary to best respond to the crisis at hand.
Seeing the response from firefighters Wednesday demonstrates that the responding departments — Butler Bureau of Fire, Butler Township Volunteer Fire District, Penn Township Volunteer Fire Company and VA Butler Fire and Emergency Services, have their duties down pat.
We felt it was important to commend the hard work of the first responders — firefighters and everyone else behind the scenes — who saved a girl’s life on Wednesday.
Truly, thank you for your efforts Wednesday and every day to protect our community.
— ET
