Thanks To Teamwork, Squad 1 ​“Got It Done”

When firefighters rolled up to a new situation and heard a 2‑year-old’s screams from inside a ventilation duct, they had one thing in mind: ​“hustle.”

The firefighters ride Squad 1, a fire engine equipped with special tools to rescue people from dangerous situations.

The Squad 1 crew that was on duty last Thursday afternoon has dealt with ugly motor vehicle crashes, some of them fatal. They’d never seen a case like the one that came over the loudspeaker that day.

They had just returned to the Whitney Avenue firehouse from another call around 3 p.m. when they heard the alarm. It was the two-toned sound that indicates a non-medical emergency.

The call came in with only this description: ​“Child stuck in vent.”

The Squad 1 crew — Robert Bonetti, Heather Myers, Miguel Rosado, Jr., Lt. Chris Parker and John Cretella — piled into the truck and headed across town.

The team has worked together since January 2011, when Bonetti joined the post. They come to the job with a range of perspectives: Cretella, the driver, is a plumber on the side. Myers, of North Haven, is a former waitress and graphic designer. Rosado, who grew up in the Hill, is following the footsteps of his father, Miguel Rosado Sr., who’s now a fire captain. Bonetti worked as a computer network engineer, tried selling Audis, and worked in an airport before landing on Squad 1.

Now they staff a specialized unit that handles extrications, confined-space rescues, hazardous materials and high-angle rescues like the one from the top of East Rock. They staff the entire eastern half of the city.

As they rode over to Woodward Avenue with lights and sirens blazing, Myers recalled thinking, ​“I’ve never seen this before.”

“I hope the little guy isn’t crawling around” in the ducts, Rosado thought to himself. He pictured firefighters following a toddler as he made his way through a system of horizontal tubes. How would they get him out?

Myers, the 46-year-old mother of three teenagers, recalls feeling a sense of urgency. ​“Whenever it’s a kid, you’re trying to move more quickly. You think of your own kid and you want to get him out.”

A ​“Frantic” Situation

At the time they got the call, Engine 5 and Emergency 1 from Woodward Avenue were already at the home on Prospect Avenue. Firefighters there called Acting Battalion Chief William Gambardella to let him know they’d need the specialized services of Squad One.

Gambardella arrived at the scene and found the mother ​“pretty frantic,” he recalled. Her 2‑year-old son had fallen 10 – 15 feet down a ventilation duct in the dining room on the first floor of the house. The boy had apparently removed a plastic grate from the duct where it connects at floor-level. He fell down to the basement, a straight drop. He was now stuck, standing feet first inside a rectangular duct that connects to the basement furnace.

“I looked down and I could hear him screaming,” Gambardella recalled. ​“He was crying, which was a good thing.” That meant he was breathing.

Gambardella called Squad 1 with specific instructions on what equipment to bring inside.

Engine 5 firefighters kept a flashlight on the boy while Squad 1 arrived on the scene.

Inside the truck, the members of Squad 1 had already divvied up what equipment they’d bring.

Teamwork

They’re used to dividing roles and working as a team — for example on an elevator extrication like the one that took place Tuesday at the Crown Street Parking Garage.

The call came in around 7:25. A guy was stuck in the elevator of the city’s 1971 parking garage. Myers sat in the starboard side of the rear of the truck. That’s the seat for the person who grabs the ​“drop key” to crank open the elevator door. Rosado sat next to her. He grabbed a flashlight and a set of irons (a flathead ax and Halligan bar). Bonetti grabbed a ​“pike pole” in case the power switch was too far out of reach.

They worked together to unlock the door in a jiffy. Then they zipped up the working elevator to turn the power off in the other elevator, so that no one else got trapped. (They’re pictured on that job at the top of this story.)

The roles were less defined last Thursday as they rolled up to a first-of-its-kind job, said Rosado. But they still had a plan.

Bonetti grabbed a Sawzall. Myers grabbed tin snips. And Rosado pulled out a socket set. They headed down to the small basement, where the mother was talking to her child through the duct.

Peering through a 2‑inch-by-2-inch hole in the duct, they saw just where the boy was. Then they got right to work to set him free.

Myers and Parker set to work on one end of the duct, removing bolts with the socket set. Rosado and Cretella tried a second strategy — cutting the boy out. They decided not to use the Sawzall, which is ​“violent, loud,” and could send shards down toward the boy, Myers said.

They decided to use those metal shears. Rosado started cutting, beginning from the little hole they found in the duct. The kid was still screaming inside.

Rosado and Myers felt the pressure.

“Get it done,” Myers recalled thinking as she cranked on the hard-to-reach bolts.

“Cut faster, cut faster,” Rosado kept telling himself as he worked the shears through the heavy metal alloy with his right hand. All the time, firefighters from above shone a light on the kid to keep him out of the pitch black. Rosado kept cutting until he had created a flap big enough so the kid could get out.

When they got close to rescuing him, the little one became still, Rosado said. That was helpful.

The firefighters peeled forward the edges of the hole they had cut, pointing the sharp edges away from the child. And they threw Bonetti’s jacket over the opening so that the kid wouldn’t get sliced on his way out.

Cretella reached down for the child, who jumped into his arms.

“We just handed him over to the mother,” Rosado recalled, and their work was done.

“These guys did an excellent job. They’re consummate professionals,” Gambardella remarked. ​“Less than five minutes from them walking in the door, we had him out of the duct work.”

Myers, who has seven years on the force, said she had never come across a rescue like that. The closest case was when a kid climbed inside a plastic playhouse and got stuck. Firefighters had to use the shears to pull him out. On the other end of the spectrum, she has seen her share of fatal car crashes.

If the job is stressful, it’s for a good reason, Myers said: For the past 10 years, she worked as a graphic designer for a pharmaceutical marketing firm. She changed careers because ​“I refused to run around and be out of my mind for a piece of paper,” she said. ​“I’d rather be stressed out for more important things.”

She and Rosado said while the situation was scary, they didn’t feel like they were saving a life on Thursday.

“It makes you nervous ​‘cause he’s crying,” Myers recalled. But ​“you knew there was definitely an answer to the problem. It was just a matter of time.”

“We just look at it like we’re doing our job,” Rosado said.

Previous firefighters of the week:

• Matt Kennedy, Jose Maldonado, Tommy Michaels, & Troy Adams
• Billy Gould
• David Vargas and Isaias Miranda