The term 'baby on board' took on a whole new meaning for one of Nanaimo’s volunteer firefighters this week.
Extension Volunteer Fire Department Lieut. Jason Devisser, who is also the fire department’s chief mechanical engineer, was heading west on the Duke Point Highway returning a fire truck from its annual inspection with Berk’s Intertruck on Tuesday, Dec. 3, when an SUV with its hazard lights flashing passed his fire truck.
“The guy came flying past me with his hazards on, pulled out in front of me, jammed on his brakes and made me stop, jumped out waving his arms, asking me to call 911,” Devisser said. “I’m like, 'OK, what’s going on?' and he said 'my wife just had a baby in the car.'”
Devisser saw the child was in the mother’s arms, and one of his first thoughts was "I’ve got my No. 1 pumper out of district and I’m in trouble." He called for an ambulance and made sure the baby was breathing and had good colour and that the mother also appeared healthy. The ambulance dispatcher talked with the parents and made sure they warmed up the vehicle and covered the baby.
“Everybody was healthy and happy and unusually calm,” Devisser said.
He said there was little real assistance he could render other than to use the fire truck to protect the SUV from traffic where it had pulled over west of the MacMillan Road overpass. Plus, he was covered in dirt and grease from helping with the inspections of Extension’s four fire trucks.
“I didn’t even want to get close. I was moving trucks and dealing with greasy stuff all day. I didn’t even grab gloves or anything. I wasn’t expecting that,” he said.
Also, because his truck was out of service and out of its service area and Devisser was by himself and not part of a team of firefighters, he technically wasn’t supposed to act in the capacity of a first responder.
“I could be a good Samaritan, I think, but everything was under control and the ambulance people just took care of it,” he said.
Within 15 minutes, paramedics arrived and took over the scene along with firefighters from North Cedar Fire Department, which covers that area south of Nanaimo. North Cedar Fire Department deputy chief Jason Payne said his crew arrived on the scene as it was pretty much wrapping up.
“One of our command trucks got on scene and mama had already given birth to the baby. She was good. She was happy and healthy and the baby was crying, so all the good things," he said.
Payne said firefighters do train to help with childbirth, which involves learning how to perform a delivery and clamp off the umbilical cord.
“It was funny because we had just trained on this last week,” he said. “It’s something that we train on, but we don’t go into a lot of detail on it because it doesn’t happen a lot … and then, sure enough, two days later we get a call.”
Devisser said he’d never encountered a situation like the one he encountered Tuesday.
“Never. Not like this, no. I didn’t even know what to tell dispatch,” he said.
