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When they heard a fire alarm coming from their elderly neighbour’s flat, Lucy Scattergood and her fiancé Mike called on the first aid skills they had learned just months earlier to make a life-saving difference.
The Nottingham couple were watching television at home in the early evening when they heard the persistent blaring of an alarm. Concerned about their 80-year-old neighbour, they called round and offered to help. Lucy recounts what happened next:
The lady invited us in and we saw that the whole place was filled with smoke from ceiling to floor. I immediately started opening the windows in the house to clear the smoke while Mike went into the kitchen with the lady.
It turns out she had started cooking her dinner and then fallen asleep in her bedroom, before being woken by the fire alarm. Her pan had caught fire on the hob but she’d managed to put it out with cold water in the sink.
As I was opening the windows, the poor lady passed out but luckily Mike caught her on the way down. I put her on her side in the recovery position and angled her head back, so she would be breathing in smoke-free air. I know smoke rises so the lower on the floor she was, the safer she would be.
‘Vulnerable and upset’
Next I called 999 and the operator advised us to leave the room due to the smoke. However, the lady was really upset and vulnerable – and the shock of passing out had caused her to use her bowels – so I felt I had to stay there and reassure her that help was on the way. Mike also took the opportunity to call the lady’s son and others to tell them what had happened.
The paramedics arrived in ten minutes, closely followed by the fire engines. As per my training, I told the paramedic all that I’d learned from the casualty – her age and the fact she was diabetic – then she was rushed off to hospital.
Grateful for skills
Later on, the fire chief on the scene commended us and the lady's son and daughter also came over that evening to thank us. A couple of weeks later, the son turned up again with a bottle of wine and some flowers and told us his mum had been allowed home after a couple of days in hospital.
Looking back, we realise just how serious the situation was. Nobody else answered her alarm, and if we hadn't gone when we did things might have gone very badly. We both felt really good about what we were able to do for the lady and I’m so grateful for all I learned from my Everyday First Aid course.