Baby Jack "Frost" Returns to the Tolland Fire Department

It was 2 a.m. on Jan. 27 and to say it was snowing would be an understatement. Mother Nature had dealt Connecticut another blow and the snow was piling up waist deep outside the Mello residence.

Cynthia and her family were asleep then the excitement began. Cynthia, 9 months pregnant with her second child, went into labor. She woke up her husband Greg to tell him her water had just broken. Then she went to wake her daughter, Taylor Kilduff, a fourth grader at Tolland Intermediate School.

“It was all a blur,” Cynthia said recently recalling the night.

It quickly became clear after Greg’s failed attempt to shovel the driveway (there was just too much snow) that the Mellos would need assistance getting Cynthia to St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford to deliver her son; the family called 9-1-1.

On duty that night at the town fire stations were Dennis Carlson, Steve Pasek, Mark Morrison and Joe Duval. They were anticipating it would be a busy night, but even they were not expecting what unfolded next.

With help from plow truck drivers from the town’s highway and parks departments, the firefighters and ambulance crew had to literally plow their way to the Mello’s house and then blaze a trail through back roads and Interstate 84 to get Cynthia to the hospital, all the while unsure of when the baby boy, dubbed Jack Frost, would make his grand entrance.

“It was definitely a different experience,” Pasek, the ambulance technician, said recently.

On May 16, Cynthia, Taylor and baby Jack William Mello again called upon the Tolland Fire Department, but this time it was to offer a heartfelt thank you.

“Here he is,” Cynthia said, as she placed 3½-month-old Jack, snug in his car seat, on a table in the front of the fire department’s training room. “Here’s the guy that caused all the excitement.”

“I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did. Without you we would have been stuck,” Cynthia told the group.

“It’s a good feeling. We don’t normally get to see the patient again after a call,” Morrison, the ambulance driver that night, said in May.

In the hallway outside the training room, Pasek, Morrison and Duval recalled the difficulties of the night.

That morning the snow was so deep the ambulance could not make it down the roads. The town road crew had been out plowing for a while, but the snow was falling fast and heavy. At the time of the call the town plows were on the other side of town, the firefighters said. Duval hopped in the department pickup truck that had a plow attachment and started clearing a path for the ambulance.

The entire trip was tricky; it took a couple attempts for Duval to get the pickup up Robin Circle to the Mello household. Once there, the snow was waist high in the driveway. All the while, Cynthia said she remained calm and tried to get Greg and Taylor to do the same.

“I don’t know how they orchestrated it behind the scene, but everything seemed to go by so quickly,” Cynthia said, adding that, at least from her vantage point from inside the ambulance, it seemed Pasek took the whole ride to Hartford in stride.

“It took teamwork,” Pasek said.

Outside it was chaotic. In addition to the fire department’s pick-up truck, Joseph Ladone from the town highway department and Parks and Facilities Department Working Foreman Paul Russell helped clear the way for the ambulance. Russell continued to escort the ambulance down the interstate plowing the way through a stretch of road that was littered with disabled vehicles and tractor-trailer trucks, the firefighters said.

When the crew reached the Hartford city line, another plow driver took over before Cynthia was safely delivered to St. Francis Medical Center nearly two hours after their trek began.

Despite the concern that the baby boy would be burn en route to the hospital, Jack William was born at 11 that night; a 7-pound, 7-ounce, 20-inch long healthy baby.

“It was definitely an interesting night,” Morrison said