Phone Advice Saves Baby Who Fell in Pool

The 911 emergency call about 1 p.m. Sunday came to Jonathan Wilkes, 31, a fire dispatcher in Anaheim.

“The mother’s voice was hysterical,” Wilkes said. “The first thing she said was: ‘My daughter is drowning!’ ”

The victim was a 14-month-old girl who had fallen into a swimming pool at her home on North Garland Lane in Anaheim. As Wilkes talked to the mother, verifying the address, his partner at the dispatch center, David Paschke, notified the paramedic station closest to the child’s home.

Wilkes tried to calm the mother. Over the phone, he gave her step-by-step instructions on how to try to revive the baby with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The effort succeeded. Wilkes, over the telephone, could hear the baby, who had not been breathing, begin to cry about 2 minutes after Wilkes told the mother what to do.

About 3 minutes later, the Anaheim Fire Department paramedics arrived at the house. “I was afraid we’d get there and find a child drowning victim,” said Anaheim Fire Capt. Alex MacLean of Engine 5. “Instead we found a baby that was breathing and crying and screaming. It looked to me like the baby was going to be fine.”

Baby’s Condition ‘Good’

Doctors later agreed. The baby, Tiffany Eichmann, first was taken to Kaiser Permanente Anaheim Medical Center and then was transferred to Childrens Hospital of Orange County in Orange for observation. A spokeswoman at Childrens Hospital said Sunday night that the baby’s condition was “good” and that she did not require treatment in the intensive care unit.

Fire Department officials on Sunday credited dispatcher Wilkes with being the hero in the lifesaving drama. Noting that minutes--sometimes even seconds--can make the difference between death or brain damage in a near-drowning episode, the fire officials said Wilkes’ calm, quick action saved Tiffany. Department officials said they did not have the names of Tiffany’s mother or other relatives.

“Jonathan did a fantastic job,” said his supervisor, lead dispatcher Diane Boyles. “We’ve just completed training for our personnel as emergency medical dispatchers and that means they can give instructions over the telephone.” She added that Wilkes’ telephone work on Sunday showed the benefit of such upgrading for fire dispatchers.

Fire Capt. MacLean said, “This is a fairly new thing for our dispatchers and I think it shows what can be done. Any time a child is saved from a drowning, it definitely is a good job.”

The dispatcher, Wilkes, downplayed his role during an interview Sunday afternoon. But he said he was pleased that his training could be put to good use. Wilkes is a dispatcher for Net 4, a communications center in Anaheim that handles calls for the fire departments in Anaheim, Orange, Garden Grove, Fullerton and Buena Park. The Net 4 dispatchers completed upgrading to “emergency medical dispatcher” status last month following several weeks of training, Boyles said.

Calming the Mother

Wilkes said he used his training to try to get quick help to the baby on Sunday afternoon, as the paramedics were en route. The first step, he said, was calming the mother down.

“I told her the paramedics were on the way, and she became very calm,” he said. “I then asked her to bring the child inside the house. The baby was brought inside, and she told me she put the child on a counter in the kitchen next to the phone.

“I asked her if the child was breathing and she said ‘no.’ So I said we would go into CPR. I told her to try to establish an airway for the child to breathe. After she got the baby positioned, I heard the child make a gurgling sound. I told the mother to turn the child’s head to allow the water to get out.

“She did this, and then I heard the baby make a coughing sound. Then there was the sound of her screaming and crying. I told the mother to let the baby cry--that it was a way of getting oxygen into those lungs.”

Wilkes said clearing the child’s airway and getting the water out proved to be all that was needed. He said the mother did not need to use CPR chest pressure on the infant.

Floating in Pool

Wilkes said the baby girl apparently fell into the house’s swimming pool shortly before 1 p.m. and was found floating face down.

MacLean, who was among the firefighters and paramedics who went to the scene, said that an older man, who he guessed to be the child’s grandfather, apparently jumped into the pool with his clothes on to pull the baby out of the water.

The mother, who is about 25, and other family members declined to talk about the incident.

Wilkes praised the mother’s response to his telephone instructions. “She was very responsive to my instructions, and she followed them exactly,” he said. “She told me, after it was all over: ‘Thank you very much for your help.’ ”

Wilkes is a graduate of Rancho Santiago College’s emergency medical technician program. He is a reserve fire inspector for the Anaheim Fire Department, in addition to his dispatcher work for Net 4. He also serves as a part-time firefighter in Riverside County, where he lives in the city of Riverside with his wife and children, ages 12, 9, and 2.

“Having three children of my own, I have a certain amount of empathy dealing with a call like this,” he said. “After you get off the line, you tend to think of your own personal family.”