AARON LEO aleo@ctpost.com
ConnPost Article Last Updated: 11/05/2007 11:54:03 PM EST
Firefighter Paul Berman, of
Woodbury, N.J., poses at his hotel in Stratford on Saturday
evening, with the Merritt Parkway in the background. In
September, Berman gave CPR to an 11-month-old infant at the scene
of an accident along Interstate 95 in Stratford. The Stratford
Fire Department honored Berman at its annual awards dinner
Saturday night. (Christian Abraham/Connecticut Post)
Nine years ago, New Jersey volunteer firefighter Paul Berman and a colleague tried to save two children from a burning building in their town.
The valiant effort, however, failed.
It haunted Berman until the night of Sept. 25, when he revived an unconscious 11-month-old girl at the scene of an accident on Interstate 95 in Stratford.
"I felt I was redeemed," Berman said of the baby's rescue. "I'm humbly appreciative that I had the opportunity to help somebody."
On Saturday, Berman's heroism was cited among the honorees at the Stratford Fire Department's annual retirement and awards dinner at Liedle's.
Berman was feted along with 10 Stratford firefighters who retired this year. He was presented with the department's Special Award for Honorable Service.
Though he is modest about his role in saving the girl, Berman still vividly recalls the Sept. 25 three-vehicle accident on I-95, which he encountered while driving to a sales call about 8 p.m.
First Berman saw brake lights, then he didn't. Then he stopped because he thought he saw something else.
"It appeared as though there was a body in the road," which later turned out to be blankets and a pillow.
But he was led to a van where a frantic mother was trying to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her tiny daughter, who was turning blue.
"She was pushing on the baby's stomach," he recalled.
Berman identified himself as a firefighter and offered to help. Then he took the baby, who had no pulse and wasn't breathing.
He had just been training to do child CPR, but only on mannequins.
"I was totally amazed that I had the ability to do that," he said.
Whereas CPR on adults calls for sharp compressions of the chest and infusing the victim's lungs with air, CPR for children calls for more delicate techniques.
"You have to really be careful," Berman said.
But his efforts paid off when the baby started spitting up, a sign she was breathing again.
Nobody was killed in the accident, said Stratford Assistant Fire Chief Tom Murray.
Berman, 51, said he's been a volunteer firefighter for 16 years in the southern New Jersey city of Woodbury, about 20 miles from the Delaware state line.
Also, all of the Stratford firefighters involved in a December 2006 house fire rescue were presented a unit citation, including a 20-year veteran who suffered a career-ending injury during the operation.
Firefighter Michael Giaquinto, 47, retired on a disability pension after the fire, during which he aggravated a neck injury from August 2006.
In the December rescue, he helped carry a 24-year-old man from a Meadowview Avenue home. The man lived.
"I just lended a hand," Giaquinto said.
Lt. Lance Edwards and Firefighter Steve Alesevich were searching for the man in the burning building and Alesevich found him in the bathroom. They carried him from the bathroom to the front door, where Giaquinto helped get him on the stretcher. Firefighter Doug Ashe helped douse flames to allow the firefighters to search, Edwards noted.
Giaquinto said the lieutenant and the firefighter carrying the man "looked like they were in some trouble" when he saw them at the door.
"We felt like we had run a marathon," Edwards said
afterward.