A frantic mother of a choking teen sent out a message for help to what she thought was the local fire department’s Facebook page but sent the message to a department in Massachusetts instead. The mixup may have saved her son’s life.
Michele Rock and her 16-year-old son Andrew were eating chicken at the Rabbit River Estates mobile home park in Wayland Township when a bone got lodged in Andrew’s throat Saturday night around 10:30 p.m.
Michele did not have a phone so she tried to reach the local Wayland fire department through Facebook and got the Wayland, Massachusetts fire department instead.
An on-duty firefighter there saw the post but was not familiar with the address. After getting more information, he discovered she was messaging from Michigan and contacted the Wayland, Michigan fire department.
“We’re a volunteer fire department so nobody is monitoring our Facebook page or usually at the fire department to answer the phone either,” said Wayland fire chief Joe Miller. “But it was a full moon and everything lined up just right.”
The local Wayland fire department was on a mutual aid call to a house fire in Hopkins so Miller and another firefighter were manning the station, got the call, and verified the address was in their area.
An ambulance was dispatched and Andrew is doing just fine today.
Because Michelle posted to the wrong Facebook page, help was readily available and because the local Wayland department was giving mutual aid to Hopkins there was someone manning the station to answer the phone for a mutual aid call from 800 miles away.
But it doesn’t end there.
When Miller returned home Monday night from a fire meeting, his wife had talked to her cousin who lives in Wayland, Massachusetts, near the fire station.
“She saw the news on TV there and is going to make pies for the firefighters at the Massachusetts station,” Miller said. “My wife hasn’t seen her cousin in 10 years and they talked for two-and-a-half hours.”
Although the story had a happy ending, fire officials say never message them in an emergency and call 911 whenever possible.
The local Wayland fire department actually gave mutual aid to Hopkins twice over the weekend.
The departments were called for a woodstove fire on 126th Avenue in Hopkins Township Saturday night. When they arrived at the scene, firefighters found the structure to have fire in a first floor room and the attic space of the first and second floors. They were able to keep this fire from extending to the rest of the home.
On Sunday, they were called to a barn fire in a lean-to built into the side of the barn.
Virginia Ransbottom can be contacted at vransbottom@allegannews.com or at (269) 673-5534.
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