Seven-year-old Birk Ouellette was a reluctant hero Friday as Emergency Medical Services personnel gathered in his house to congratulate him for saving his mother’s life.
The youngster was camera-shy when television crews and reporters tried to get him to describe what happened Sunday, Dec. 11 when his mother collapsed on the kitchen floor. Together with three-year-old brother Merrick, Birk alternately acted out for the reporters and then cuddled close to Mom. Even though he was lauded as a hero, the boy refused to talk.
Yet two weeks before Christmas, this Grade 2 student who attends Namao School knew just what to do and what to say to emergency dispatcher Kirk Ryan, who answered Birk’s 911 call.
“He told me, ‘My mom is lying on the ground and I can’t wake her up’,” said Ryan, an emergency communications officer for Alberta Health Services.
“My heart dropped right then,” said Ryan.
Birk was alone that day with his brother and unconscious mother while his father worked.
Ryan asked the boy to describe his mother’s condition.
“He said that she was not awake and looked like she was sleeping,” Ryan said.
At first Ryan had some difficulty getting Birk to provide the necessary information about his mother’s breathing patterns. Finally he asked the child to watch to see if her chest was rising and falling. Ryan needed to know how many breaths per minutes the woman was taking so he could understand the seriousness of her condition.
“Finally he told me every time her chest was going up and down. He was not crying and in fact I would say he was one of the calmest children I ever had to deal with,” said Ryan.
Once he determined that Maria’s breathing was close to normal the dispatcher asked the boy to lift his mother’s chin and tilt her head back to open her airways.
“He did that and on his own, without my prompting, he asked his little brother Merrick to go and watch out the window and wait for the ambulance to come. Then, when they got there, he left his mother and ran to unlock the door,” Ryan said.
Ryan was grateful that Birk made the call from a landline.
“Thank God he made that call from a landline. That helped us locate them,” said Ryan.
Still, landline or not, Birk was able to clearly give his rural address and phone number to the dispatcher.
Birk’s parents Maria and Paul Ouellette were pleased that their son knew his address so well and credited his schoolteachers for drumming it into him.
“We haven’t been on the acreage that long. I’m surprised he was able to tell the ambulance where to find us, because our address changed three times in the last few months because Canada Post changed it,” Maria Ouellette said.
Though their son seemed overwhelmed by the media attention Friday, his father was proud of his son’s accomplishment and said Christmas had been relatively normal for the child.
“He knows he did the right thing. He knew what to do when he had to. We taught him to call 911 in an emergency and he did,” Paul Ouellette said.
“Who knows what would have happened if it had not been for him,” said Maria, who said that her doctors believe she may have had a seizure, but are still doing tests to determine the cause of her unconsciousness.
“I want parents to know that they should teach their children to call 911. Because my son called 911, he saved my life. He is my hero,” she said.
