For WHFD, It's About Lives, 'Tomorrow's Leaders'

West Hartford Assistant Fire Chief Gary Allyn was able to joke. Even better, Eugene Leach is still around to laugh.

West Hartford may have a national reputation as a great place to live, Allyn said Wednesday at the ’s annual awards ceremony. But the town is a pretty good place to have a coronary too.

“I think the message to take away is, really, if you’re going to have a cardiac arrest, you are going to want to have it here in the town of West Hartford,” Allyn said. “We don’t want to put a sign out there about that [but] our mission really is to save lives and that’s what we try to do.”

Last year, three West Hartford lives, including Leach's, were saved in large measure because of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs), Allyn said at the event. Since 1998, when the town acquired its first portable defibrillator, an estimated 100 lives have AEDs to thank.

On Sept. 16, Leach, a Trinity College professor, collapsed with a heart attack during a workout in a fitness room at on Buena Vista Road. His breathing was faint and his face was turning blue.

“I had very, very little expectation of him surviving this,” Cornerstone lifeguard Sam Allison, a West Hartford resident, told The Hartford Courant in October.

But Allison and fellow Cornerstone staffers Dan Stowe of South Windsor and Carter Hatton of Farmington reacted swiftly and stuck to their training. They started CPR. An AED was nearby and they applied its electrical current, jolting Leach, 66. Firefighters and paramedics arrived exactly four minutes, three seconds after the 911 call, Allyn said.

In less than a week, Leach was out of the hospital with no neurological damage – not often the case after heart attacks, his cardiologist at UConn Health Center said.

“We had an opportunity to be the first [organization of first responders] in the state of Connecticut to have automated external defibrillators,” Allyn told an audience at Town Hall that included police, Town Council members, Town Manager Ron Van Winkle and well-wishers.

The West Hartford Fire Department acquired its first AED on Feb. 5, 1998, Allyn said. Now there are more than 30 in West Hartford schools, Town Hall and recreational facilities.

“We’ve been extremely fortunate over those years to have had a lot of saves. Mr. Leach is an example,” Allyn said.

Allison, Hatton and Stowe received the fire department’s Citizen Award for their actions, and three West Hartford Fire Department unit citations were presented in appreciation of life-saving measures:

• Lt. William Kall, apparatus operator Christopher Pettinelli, and firefighters Robert Howe and Benjamin Coker of Quint 2 for combining with the Cornerstone staffers and to rescue Leach.
• Kall, apparatus operator Robert Michalak, and firefighters Howe and Coker of Quint 2 for an AED save Jan. 26, 2010, on Linbrook Road.
• Capt. Gerald Leblanc, apparatus operator Louie Grinfield, and firefighters Coker and Jarrad Smith of Engine 4 for resuscitating a Timberwood Road resident who suffered a cardiac arrest Nov. 9.

Michalak also received the Gene T. Hoffman Driver of the Year award.

“We search each year for a driver who embodies the traits that Gene exhibited,” said battalion chief and awards chairman Michael Yacovino. “Bob is a great driver, he’s a great firefighter. He’s a great guy just to work with every day. He keeps the shift upbeat and I’m proud to say I not only work with him but he’s my friend as well.”

Smith, who has also been and the , was firefighter of the year.

“Firefighter Smith is one of our stars of the future,” Allyn said. “A lot of the folks you see here today have a common theme. Those are our stars for the future. … these are the folks who are going to be tomorrow’s leaders.”