Orange Firefighter Helps Save Boy While On Vacation In Mexico

ORANGE, CT —An Orange volunteer firefighter is being credited with saving the life of a 13-year-old boy while vacationing in Mexico.

Tom Bartiss, an active firefighter and chaplain of the Orange Volunteer Fire Department, was vacationing with his wife, Ann, at a resort outside Cancun, Mexico.

The pair was enjoying dinner when Ann noticed “a commotion” outside by the pool.

“My wife said there’s little feet out there and they’re working on him,” Bartiss recalled in a statement. That’s when his training kicked in and he dashed to the child’s side. Another bystander had just started CPR.

“I said you do compressions and I’ll get the breaths in,” he recalled. “I kept looking at his eyes. They were almost normal. I said we’ve got a chance.”

Bartiss said he and the woman did CPR on the child for about 20 minutes. At times, the child seemed to moan, but there was no pulse. They continued compressions and rescue breathing, according to the statement.

Finally, a doctor and a pediatric ambulance arrived. An automatic external defibrillator indicated no shock was needed yet. The doctor and other emergency personnel began administering medications to the child.

Then, the defibrillator indicated it was time to shock the child. After two shocks, the team found a pulse.

“He started coming around,” Bartiss said in the statement. The child was coughing but not coughing up water.

The ambulance took the child away to a pediatric hospital in Cancun.

The child was back at the resort three days later.

“If that woman wasn’t there and started CPR before I did, I don’t think he would have made it,” Bartiss said. “I was just in the right place at the right time. I’m so grateful I was there. I hope I gave the kid a long, good life. God definitely has a plan.”

Bartiss has served as an Orange firefighter for about eight years. Before that, he was a career firefighter in West Haven for about 28 years. After training to become an Episcopal deacon, Bartiss worked as a chaplain at Griffin Hospital in Derby for eight years.

“Tom is a great firefighter and a wonderful part of the Orange Fire Department,” Fire Chief Vaughan Dumas said in a statement. “Whether he’s working at the scene of an emergency or talking quietly with a firefighter about something they’ve seen or something going on in their lives, Tom always applies all his skill, talent and compassion. We’re very proud of what Tom did in Mexico. We’re not surprised, though, because he is the consummate firefighter.”