HCEMS workers honored for heroic duty

HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WDEF) – On Wednesday, Hamilton County Emergency Medical Service workers were honored by the people whose lives they saved.   

In under two weeks, Paramedic Savannah Houser was involved in two lifesaving calls.

Houser and EMT Brooklyn Smith saved a man who went into cardiac arrest while riding in their ambulance in late September.

“Once we got him back, it was just the biggest sigh of relief that you have ever dealt with,” said Smith. “There are not very many opportunities or very many calls where we actually get patients back and, in his case, where he woke up and was talking to us. So, it was just, it was a huge sigh of relief.”

Just over a week later, Houser and David Mooneyham helped pull two people, including a 9-year-old little girl, from a badly wrecked car.

“They kept her calm, they instructed her exactly what was going on, kept her in the loop, talked to her about her daughter,” said John Miller, Director of Hamilton County EMS. 

Paramedics are trained to stay cool in a crisis. 

But it meant a lot to them that their efforts were being celebrated.

“If you are a healthcare provider at all, it is one of the rare occasions where we get to see the final outcome from a patient. That does not happen very often.” Miller concluded.