A detour around tragedy

Marisa O’Neil

It was the kind of call firefighters dread -- but one with the best

possible outcome.

The afternoon of Feb. 7, firefighters at Costa Mesa’s Royal Palm

station got a call that a 4-year-old boy at a nearby apartment

complex was choking on a grape. His panicked parents, who were

visiting the Pinecreek Drive apartment from Oklahoma, wanted to put

him in the car and drive to the nearest hospital, Costa Mesa

firefighter Dan Mudra said.

A 911 dispatcher and security guards at the complex urged them to

wait. Help was on its way.

“Even two minutes seems like an eternity when your son’s not

breathing,” paramedic Rich Merritt said. “But that would have been a

fatal mistake [not to wait].”

Every minute the brain is denied oxygen increases the chances of

permanent damage, Mudra said. As they rushed to the boy’s aid, they

had no idea how long he’d been deprived of oxygen.

When they arrived at the scene, the parents ran up to the truck

and handed the boy to Merritt.

“He was completely non-breathing,” Merritt said. “He’d turned blue

and was limp. He was one step away from dying.”

Merritt, who also has a 4-year-old son, started the Heimlich

maneuver and back blows to dislodge the grape. It didn’t budge.

“It’s pretty emotional when you see something like that,” Merritt

said. “At that point, I’m working on my own boy, when I see a boy the

same age, and he’s not breathing.”

Paramedic Chris Holmes then stepped in with a lighted scope, but

at first, he couldn’t find the grape. After further searching, he

found it lodged in the boy’s trachea, he said.

Using forceps, he reached in and pulled out the grape, Holmes

said.

The boy gasped for air but still had difficulty breathing on his

own, Mudra said.

Paramedics rode with him in an ambulance to Hoag Hospital. A major

traffic accident earlier in the afternoon had closed Newport

Boulevard at Industrial Way, forcing the ambulance driver to detour

around a massive traffic snarl, Holmes said.

If the boy’s parents had tried to drive there on their own, in an

unfamiliar city, they would never have made it in time to save him,

Holmes said.

By the time the ambulance got to Hoag, the boy was able to talk

and follow simple commands, a good sign that he’d make a full

recovery, Merritt said.

“The stars lined up OK on this one,” Holmes said. “Everything from

the dispatcher to the ambulance crew -- everything turned out well.

It’s one of those calls we’ll be thinking about for a long time.”

Though first instinct in such an emergency might be to try to get

to the hospital on your own, firefighters and paramedics are trained

to spring into action as soon as they’re called, Merritt said.

The call highlighted the importance of not leaving small children

alone -- even for a second -- when they’re eating, he said. And even

though it took more than the Heimlich to dislodge the grape in this

case, it’s important for all parents to have CPR training, he said.

Costa Mesa is planning CPR classes for the spring, said Brenda

Emrick, fire prevention specialist for the city.

Firefighters get called to a lot of false alarms and a few

incidents that have a bad outcome, Holmes said.

But the ones that turn out well, like this one, make everything

worthwhile, he said.

“It’s stunning how close it was,” Holmes said. “We’re lucky to be

the ones that were there.”