Clark County Fire District 3 (CCFD3) and American Medical Response (AMR) crews were inside a home providing care to a patient when frantic cries for help broke out across the street as smoke poured out from the window of a neighboring home on the evening of Tuesday, June 10, in Battle Ground.
Three individuals were transported to area hospitals, two from the fire and one from the original medical emergency, and two dogs were also rescued from the fire and successfully revived by firefighters and medics.
While the smoke and flames came out of the neighboring residence, an elderly man was leaning from a bedroom window calling for assistance. Without hesitation, the team divided their resources. Some remained with the medical patient, while others transitioned immediately into rescue operations. As the firefighters from Engine 35 quickly put on their firefighting gear, AMR crew members Adam Lengvenis and Ruben Kovalenko, also a paramedic, began the extrication of the elderly man. That’s when they learned a third victim, the man’s girlfriend, was in the room where the fire originated.
Lead paramedic on AMR Medic 1620 Camille Burgess recalled the situation quickly transitioning into the fact that the two individuals involved in the fire were more critical than the original patient on the medical call.
“It kind of worked out really perfectly because we had two paramedics and then we had a fire crew with us,” Kovalenko said.
While Kovalenko and Lengvenis rescued the elderly man, firefighters were suited up and had a hose on the flames. As firefighter Tim Axelson made entry to rescue the elderly woman amid the thick smoke causing zero visibility, Burgess was notified that the original patient from the medical call had collapsed and was unconscious after refusing transport initially, prompting an even more rapid and evolving scenario.
The situation also turned into a mass casualty incident (MCI), Burgess said, as the number of patients then outweighed the number of responding vehicles on scene. They had just one fire engine and one ambulance for the initial call. Burgess then requested additional resources for medical transport and to fight the blaze. The initial responding crews described the incident as if it were out of a TV show or movie.
“There was black smoke all the way to the ground, very high heat. It was a ventilation controlled fire, so the fire was choking itself out at that point,” CCFD3 Engine 35 Captain EMT Charlie Campbell said.
The elderly woman needed immediate transport as she had second- to third-degree burns and smoke inhalation.
“As soon as that patient was brought outside, we realized this patient was definitely a higher acuity than the patient we had just pulled out of the window,” Kovalenko said. “So this patient was immediately our first priority and Adam [Lengvenis] like magically appeared with a stretcher right behind us. It was perfect. The firefighter who came out was exhausted and very hot, clearly, right? I was like, ‘Are you good to go?’ He’s like, ‘Give me a second.’ He took a deep breath and then he was like, ‘All right, I’m ready.’ We picked up the patient, loaded her on the gurney, got a set of vitals and took her to the ambulance.”
Kovalenko added that Lengvenis took initiative and did a great job of triaging and pointing out that the patient needed to be immediately transported. Lengvenis notified Burgess of the criticality of the elderly woman, but could not leave the initial medical patient. A minute or two after, AMR Medic 1618, Kelly O’Laughlin and Taylor Baines, arrived and were transferred care of the initial patient. The team of Burgess, Kovalenko and Lengvenis, with Lengvenis at the wheel, brought the elderly woman to a Portland hospital for burn treatment.
Kovalenko added that Burgess was commended for her efforts on treating the burn victim by the tech of the receiving crew of the receiving medical facility in Portland — a high-level trauma center.
A third AMR ambulance arrived to take care of the elderly man and ultimately transported him to a Portland hospital with his two dogs that were rescued from the house fire.
The rapid and coordinated response allowed crews to knock down the fire and contain it primarily to a single room.
When the dogs were rescued, they were “sort of breathing but limp,” Campbell said. “We went and got our animal rescue stuff off our rig and oxygen and we started to try to give them oxygen and just vigorously stimulate them. … I think it took like 10 minutes to get these dogs awake enough where we could give them back to the owner.”
The AMR and CCFD3 crews later coordinated with Northwest Vet ER for continued care.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation as of Sunday, June 15, and Fire District 3 continues to monitor the conditions of all patients, they added in a news release.
This life-saving operation underscores the critical importance of the three-person engine staffing — a standard CCFD3 will soon be able to maintain consistently thanks to the voter-approved levy lid lift passed last year. Under Washington state law, interior rescue operations are prohibited unless at least three firefighters are on scene — two to enter and one to remain outside. Without that staffing level, this rescue would not have been officially allowed, the release added.
CCFD3 Training Captain Dustin Waliezer thanked the Battle Ground Police Department for securing the scene, managing traffic and bystanders, and assisting with evacuations to protect both civilians and firefighters in case the fire were to have spread among the neighboring homes.
“I absolutely believe if we did not have the resources that we had on scene and if everyone was not willing to work as beautifully as a team to get these patients out, first of all, out of the burning building, and then to get them to the places that they needed to be, I think we would have had significant fatality and possible injury of other people,” Burgess said. “And so with all of that, I could not have imagined that call running any better. That’s probably one of the best calls that I will have in my entire career.”
