Firefighters union president stricken at fire scene

The president of the Barrow County Professional Firefighters Association had a heart attack at the scene of a residential fire in the county on Saturday.

Rob Aldred, 42, was stricken after he and a handful of other Barrow County Emergency Services personnel were cleaning up the aftermath of the fire at 518 Duke Road, which is south of Highway 316 near Tanners Bridge Road.

Aldred was transported to a cardiac intensive care facility at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville.

In a text message to a reporter Sunday afternoon, he credited two things with saving his life.

“My training in recognizing the signs and symptoms, and the skills of those that provided both hospital and EMS care are the reason I am here today,” he wrote. “Everyone did their job to perfection.”

BCES Lt. Scott Dakin said the fire call came into the county's Emergency 911 center at 3:43 p.m. Dispatched to the scene were ladder truck 7, engines 3 and 4, and med units 3 and 7. Those five units were manned by a total of seven personnel. A battalion chief also went to the scene.

When firefighters arrived, the structure was heavily ablaze and the crews did not enter it, Dakin said.

He said he could not disclose the nature of Aldred’s medical emergency, but a hospital spokesman said the firefighter is an inpatient in the hospital’s Ronnie Green Heart Center.

Dakin did note that firefighters have a 300-percent greater chance of experiencing cardiac events than the general population.

Aldred said in his text message that he and the other emergency personnel had been operating Saturday "under difficult circumstances” but that he was doing well one day after his health scare.

He added: “Just as Gen. MacArthur said, ‘I shall return.’”