By Holly Fisher
Staff Writer

Jennifer Thomas

A day like Nov. 28, 2006, is a perfect example of how emergency dispatchers can indeed save lives.

Jennifer Thomas, who wasn’t supposed to be working 911 that day, answered a call from a panicked father. His 2-year-old son had climbed into a partially filled hot tub and was not breathing.

A senior EMS dispatcher with Charleston County EMS, Thomas first had to calm the father down enough to figure out what had happened. She was able to go through the standard emergency questions, determined the boy had stopped breathing and immediately knew he would need cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Thomas gave the father CPR instructions while the child’s grandfather administered it. She dispatched paramedics and the fire department to the scene and, once they arrived, Thomas’ work was done.

She later learned that Earl, the boy, had coughed up enough water to save his life. The CPR had forced the water from his lungs, she said.

As paramedics were on their way with the boy to East Cooper Medical Center, Thomas could hear the conversation the EMS workers were having with the hospital emergency room. In the background, she heard the boy cry.

“I lifted up my hands and said, ‘Thank God.’ ”

Earl was later transferred to the Medical University of South Carolina but ultimately recovered without any ill effects.

“I was so excited. I was so happy,” Thomas said when she found out Earl would be OK.

And last month, Thomas received a special call from Earl. “He called me for Thanksgiving this year. He said, ‘Happy Thanksgiving, Miss Jennifer.’ ”

It was a truly happy ending for a woman who said she was “just doing (her) job.”

As soon as firefighters Daniel Bilton and Steven Beasley arrived at the scene of the Sofa Super Store fire this past summer, they learned a store employee was trapped in the building.

Their immediate concern was saving Johnny Tyrrell III, who was on his cell phone with an emergency dispatcher. With a hammer, he was pounding the walls, trying to lead rescuers to his location.

Another store employee could pinpoint from Tyrrell’s description where he was in the store and led Bilton and Beasley to the back of the burning building.

“Steven and I cut a hole in the wall, pulled the sheet metal back and pulled him out,” Bilton said.

Tyrrell was shaken and had inhaled some smoke, but otherwise was fine.

Bilton and Beasley, both members of the St. Andrews Fire Department, see that rescue as a bright spot on an otherwise dreadful day. Nine firefighters, some of whom had worked in the past with Bilton and Beasley, died in the blaze.

“Not a lot of good came out of any of that, but that (rescue) was one good thing,” Beasley said.

Much of being a firefighter is the camaraderie—it’s the aspect of the job Beasley, a 13-year firefighting veteran, loves most.

“The guys you work with are your family away from home,” Beasley said. “You’ll never have any better friends than the guys you have in the fire department.”

Even after losing friends and colleagues, Bilton and Beasley both said they don’t think about the danger when they arrive at a fire scene.

“The whole way there, what’s running through my mind, is I create a scenario in my mind and think about what I’m going to do when I get there,” said Beasley, a fireman for six years.

The prospect of danger hits much later.

“It’s always an afterthought,” Bilton said. “Then later I think, ‘Whoa, I did that.’ ”

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