Fire fighters bring boss back from the dead

A top fire fighter who had a cardiac arrest lay dead on a sports' turf for four minutes before his colleagues who were working the night shift revived him with CPR.

On October 5 2014, Kerry Gregory, who was then the Fire Service's Auckland regional manager, had just finished playing a game of indoor soccer with his 19-year-old son at a sports' complex in New Lynn when started feeling funny and told his son he was going to sit the next match out.

"He turned around and my heart had stopped and I was dead," Gregory said

"I was really lucky that there were people there straight away who knew what to do and they called the emergency services."

The Fire Service had only started responding to medical emergencies a few months earlier and a crew arrived in about four minutes.

Colin Wright, who was then an acting senior station officer at Avondale fire station, was leading the team that was sent to the scene.

He and three other fire fighters were told a 50-year-old man had had a cardiac arrest and was unconscious - not knowing the man was Gregory.

"It probably would have been my first call responding to a medical call like that," Wright told the Herald on Sunday.

"When we arrived [the man] definitely looked in the worst state possible. He was in a very bad way."

Gregory had already been shocked with a defibrillator to try to get his heart restarted when a fire fighter started CPR.

"[The paramedics had] put an airway into him. After a couple of minutes of one of my boys giving CPR he had gagged the airway out so he'd regained consciousness from CPR alone," Wright said.

Senior station officer Colin Wright was part of the team that saved Gregory's life. Photo / Supplied

He told the Herald on Sunday he only realised the man whose life they'd saved was Gregory - his boss and previously a colleague of about two decades - when one of the fire fighters told him as they loaded Gregory on a stretcher and into an ambulance.

"To be thinking that I would be ever responding to him, because he keeps himself fit and he'd only just turned 50, it just didn't register."

Wright has never forgotten watching one of his crew members bring Gregory back from brink of death.

Wright was "elated that we'd revived [Gregory], but still absolutely concerned because he wasn't out of the woods [yet]".

Gregory was conscious but still in a critical condition and was rushed to Auckland Hospital, where he had heart surgery.

It was about a week later that he remembered it was his team who saved him.

"I probably knew earlier than that but it took a long time to recover [my memory]," Gregory said.

"It was absolutely amazing. Only 15 per cent of people who have cardiac arrests make it through so I'm very lucky in that respect in itself. But it does make you think what was the reason I was saved for?"

After 10 days in hospital Gregory went home and after another few months recovering, he returne to work in February 2015.

Since his heart attack Gregory has travelled to fire stations around the country for his job and said he often tells crews his story.

"I think it's really important for people to see the impact that we can make on others' lives," he said.

"I'm a walking example of the good work that our people have done and if it wasn't for [the Fire Service] doing medical response I wouldn't be here today.

"As a leader of the organisation I've got a responsibility to tell my story to people to motivate them to keep doing the good stuff we're doing."

Gregory said fire fighters' roles had changed dramatically in his 27 years in the service and crews were now often called on to help at medical emergencies and extreme weather events.

A lot of the medical events fire crews attended were life-threatening and being exposed to so much death - more than ever before because far fewer people died in fires than of medical events - was at times difficult for fire fighters, Gregory said.

"If it's a member of the public and we don't revive them, you feel gutted," Wright added.

"It does have quite a substantial effect on us. It's like we've failed so to speak."

It was important for fire fighters to have coping mechanisms to help them deal with what they saw, Gregory said.

"We've been doing a lot of work on how we support everyone."

Although the Fire Service responded to about 11,000 medical events last year - more than the combined number of structure fire and vegetation fire jobs - the public were often unaware its work in this area.

Fire crews were working together more closely with other emergency services than ever before, Gregory said.

Yesterday urban New Zealand Fire Service crews were amalgamated with the rural fire service to form a new combined organisation - Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

Gregory said the change would make roles and responsibilities and chains command and control clearer.