On Tuesday morning just after 10:00 a.m. a man in his 80’s collapsed at home on Hama’apilim Street after suffering a heart attack. Worried family members called emergency services for help.
Avraham Porges, who works as a Kashrut Supervisor for the Rabbinate of the city of Ashdod, was in his office a block away when he received the alert to the emergency. Without hesitation, he put on his helmet and jacket and rushed out the door to his ambucycle, flicked on his lights and sirens, and sped off to the incident.
“I had just gotten back to my office after responding to a serious motorcycle accident that took place on Moshe Sneh Boulevard where I treated a seriously injured motorcyclist who suffered injuries to his head and limbs as well as two other people who sustained light injuries. I barely had time to sit down in my office before I got the alert to the second emergency. It was one of those mornings where I went from emergency to emergency. The adrenaline stayed with me from one emergency to another and even after.”
When Porges arrived, he met another United Hatzalah volunteer EMT and fellow ambucyclist, David Bakovza, and the pair of EMTs ran up to the man’s apartment. They found family members performing CPR on the man, who was unconscious and pulseless. They quickly attached a defibrillator, took over compressions and began assisted ventilation on the man in an attempt to restart his heart and get his pulse back.
After a few minutes, they were joined by other first responders including Avraham Bahar and a mobile intensive care ambulance crew. The combined team administered adrenaline and medications and after 15 minutes of integrated CPR, they were successful in bringing back the man’s pulse.
“It was exhilarating to see the man’s pulse restored and his blood pressure return to regular levels,” said Bahar, who rushed to the scene from the entrance to the city as he was driving to work on his ambucycle at the time. “I am proud to have been a part of a successful CPR and help give this man another chance at life today,” he concluded.
“Wherever we happen to be, we drop what we are doing and rush out to help those in need,” added Porges. “We are spread all over, some at work, some at home, and no matter what, when we receive the alert we rush out to help. That is the secret of our success and I am proud to be a part of that and to have helped people during both of the incidents that I responded to earlier this morning,” he concluded.