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Every day is ‘999 Day’ – even for off-duty fire crew

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Every day is ‘999 Day’ – even for off-duty fire crew

As the country celebrates 999 Day, there comes a timely reminder that our hard-working and dedicated emergency services are never truly off-duty.

Hereford & Worcester Fire and Rescue Service held the Worcestershire awards and medals event at Worcester Guildhall last week, and among the recipients were Tenbury Wells duo Crew Commander Dan James and Firefighter Milo Jackson who received the Chief Fire Officer’s Certificate of Commendation.

Last December, Dan was out delivering Christmas cards by hand to neighbours in Tenbury.

While he was doing so, he was approached by a member of the public who recognised him as a firefighter and was seeking urgent help because a man in a house nearby had suffered a heart attack.

“Being in a small town, people do tend to recognise who you are,” said Dan.

“I raced up there and Milo, who is my brother-in-law and lives in the same street, saw me running and came up to see what was going on.

“Once I got there, I started CPR and got on the phone to the ambulance service.

“Milo came in, saw what was going on and ran to the station to get the defibrillator and then between us, we did 40 minutes CPR.”

Milo recalled: “I had just got home from work as I’m self-employed.

“I parked the van up and that’s when I turned around and saw Dan running with another person into a house just around the corner.

“I could see there was something serious happening and heard the words ‘heart attack’. So I ran down there, found out what was going on and started to use our fire crew specialist life-saving skills.”

“Sadly the man didn’t make it,” said Dan. “But we did what we had to do at the time and we gave him the very best chance of survival.

“It goes to show that as firefighters we deal with much more than fires - there’s a lot more to our role with the rescue incidents and all of the trauma events and road traffic collisions we deal with.”

Milo added: “We have all the training and we do what we have to do but sadly this time, it didn’t work out.”

PHOTO: Dan James (centre left) and Milo Jackson receive their awards from Lady Morrison and Chief Fire Officer Nathan Travis.

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