FOND DU LAC, WI (WTAQ) – Fond du Lac Fire and Rescue is commending a Good Samaritan for stopping to help two men she noticed lying unconscious on the sidewalk in the cold.
“For someone to stop is commendable and hopefully we can recognize them in the future,” says Division Chief of Fire Prevention Troy Haase, “You always want to stop in a situation where it’s cold like this. We not only treated them for the drug situation but also for hypothermia. They had been out in the cold for an unknown amount of time.”
The men were found around 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning along Merrill Street. Both were suffering from hypothermia and drug overdoses. Haase says that combination easily could have been lethal.
“Probably saved these peoples’ lives. You don’t know with the cold, how much longer they would’ve laid there or what stage the overdose was at,” Haase tells WTAQ News, “The drugs complicate that hypothermia as well because your body is not operating like it’s supposed to be working.”
Haase says it’s unclear how long the men were there or what stage of the overdose they were in. Without immediate information on what caused the men to fall unconscious, emergency responders needed to treat the men for multiple possible health issues. Treatments for things like diabetes, stroke, and other medical factors were applied.
Haase says they used “warm IV’s instead of regular IV’s helps start to warm them up slowly because things happen if you warm up the body too fast.”
Doses of Narcan were able to reverse the overdose effects. Both men were reported to be conscious when they were taken to the hospital.
Fond du Lac Fire and Rescue reports responding to a higher number of opioid overdose incidents over the past few years, but have seen a drop in the percentage of fatal cases due to the availability of Narcan and recent attention drawn to the topic.
