Chehalis firefighters Rob Gebhart and Jay Birley play bagpipes with other firefighters during a benefit last Wednesday night at the Market Street Pub.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
After a log truck driver crushed by his own pickup truck returned to his Winlock home following a 12-day stay in the hospital, one of the EMTs who had come to his rescue babysat his children on recent day so the injured man’s wife could go to work.
A half dozen members of the mostly volunteer fire department had already finished moving the D’Adda family into their new home since the Father’s Day accident happened as they were in the midst of a move.
Greg D'Adda
On the evening of June 20, after firefighters got Greg D’Adda loaded into a helicopter bound for a Seattle trauma center, they helped make sure his wife had a ride up there to be with him.
The firefighters and EMTs save lives, save houses and come to the aid of those who call; and sometimes it’s each other who they help.
D’Adda, 38, has been a volunteer firefighter for more than eight years, most of those with Lewis County Fire District 15 in Winlock.
“We take care of our own,” said Firefighter-EMT Carrie Pennington. “We don’t usually babysit people, we don’t usually offer up that much help.”
The department of some 30 members cares for a community of more than 3,000 people in South Lewis County.
It’s not all that uncommon to respond to a 911 call for one of the volunteers themselves. They went when a recently retired firefighter suffered a cardiac arrest in church. They went early last year when the house of a fairly new volunteer went up in flames.
So last week, it wasn’t so surprising the Market Street Pub in Chehalis was packed with more than 50 firefighter friends, family and strangers to help raise money for the D’Adda family’s growing medical bills.
“I don’t know how we did yet, but I think we did really good,” District 15 Firefighter-EMT Patrick Jacobson said last Thursday, the morning after the party.
Tonight, they expect to present D’Adda with the proceeds – which might be around $1,400 – at the department’s weekly training, according to Jacobson.
The Wednesday night gathering featured members of the Chehalis Fire Department Capt. Rob Gebhart and Firefighter-investigator Jay Birley playing bagpipes. They were joined by others from the Vancouver Firefighter Pipes and Drums, as well as some from the Pierce County Fire Pipes and Drums.
The pub rocked.
Greg and Delores D’Adda came out for the event.
While he’s in a wheelchair, with a leg brace and an arm sling, the volunteer firefighter said he doesn’t have too much pain.
He’s mostly concerned about a doctor visit later this week when he hopes to find out if he needs surgery on his broken collarbone – and if he might get a walking cast. His wife is primarily worried about him moving around too much and his spinal cord, because his back was broken in three places.
Greg D’Adda said he doesn’t recall much about the June accident.
He was working beneath his four-wheel drive Dodge half-ton pickup truck at his new home on Burnett Road when it fell off the jack and out of gear, he said.
“The next thing I knew, it dragged me 20 or 30 yards; that’s what I’ve been told,” D’Adda said. “It rolled me up in a ball, and somehow I flattened out. I looked back to see the driver’s tire.”
Pennington answered the call with Fireifghter-EMTs Mary Miller and Tamara Mitchell.
We did our EMT things, said Pennington, a Winlock native.
“We found out what was hurting, what wasn’t and what we had,” she said.
D’Adda was put in a cervical collar and strapped to a backboard, and they were joined by paramedics from South Lewis County EMS, and then the rescue helicopter at the grade school’s play field, she said.
The father of two says doctors are talking like it could be a year and a half before he gets back to work; and he probably won’t be able to return to log truck driving.
His list on injuries is long, and also includes broken ribs, a broken long leg bone and a crushed foot and heel.
“And my ACL is torn,” D’Adda said. “I don’t know what that is. I have no clue.”
He didn’t have medical insurance, but his car insurance paid its maximum of $10,000 which goes toward the $17,000 Life Flight bill, he said.
Fortunately he learned he got approved for DSHS’s state-funded insurance and is told it will be retroactive to June 1, D’Adda said.
He’s grateful for that, and for the help he’s getting from fellow firefighters. It’s like a family he’s grown into, he said.
He didn’t expect he really needed health insurance.
“I’m not one who gets sick or gets hurt,” D’Adda said. “But I kinda wish I had it. I’ve got medical bills racking up left and right.”
Vancouver Firefighter Pipes and Drums and others entertain a crowd Wednesday night in Chehalis
•••
EMT has treated much of the town over 30 years
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
Carrie Pennington didn’t realize at first it was a fellow volunteer firefighter who was hurt when she responded to the 911 call.
She didn’t recognize the address, but it turned out Greg D’Adda was just moving to a home in Winlock, Pennington said.
It didn’t take long to figure it out.
“You get out of the rig and see him laying there and see his family all around him, then ‘oh my goodness’,” she said. “It kind of gives you a little knot in your stomach.”
Lewis County Fire District 15 Chief Jon Hensley – leader of some 30 firefighters in the Winlock area – has logged 27 years with the department. In a small community, they’re bound to respond to calls for people they know, according to Hensley.
“I would say it’s not all that often, but when you do, it hits home,” Hensley said last week.
For Pennington, who’s been working an ambulance for three decades in her hometown, it’s not unusual.
“Quite often I know who it is,” the 54-year-old said. “Very rarely do I not know.”
Pennington graduated from Winlock High School, as did her parents and her children. For the past 20 years she’s been a teacher’s assistant at the elementary school.
The mother of five has been an EMT since before the fire department existed as it does today.
“Back when i joined in 1980 it was a private ambulance service,” Pennington said.
It was called Winlock Ambulance Service and most of the employees were women, she said.
She planned to go to nursing school and thought it would be good experience to discover if she could handle the things she might see as a nurse.
When the private company folded, it was given to the fire department. In order to keep working and be eligible for future retirement benefits, the EMTs had to also become firefighters, she said.
Pennington doesn’t do a lot of firefighting, she said. And she never did get her nursing degree.
But she responds to a lot of aid calls. She’s treated members of the department and individuals she knows from school and church.
“I worked on my mother when she had a cardiac arrest; I’ve worked on my dad when he was sick,” Pennington said.
“Without a doubt, that was probably the toughest call I’ve ever been on,” she said of trying and failing to revive her mother in 2005.
Today, the volunteer department has about nine EMTs, and the mix is closer to half women and half men. Even Chief Hensley’s daughter, who Pennington taught in her first year at the preschool has become one of the EMTs.
“I’ve gone on a call for one of our own EMTs; we had to go to her house,” Pennington said. “They’ve come to my house.”
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