Fire Fighters Association of Ontario<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn Jan. 19, 2019, Hiller was off-duty and travelling north on Highway 6 in Fergus with his daughter, when a vehicle pulled out in front of them without warning.<\/p>\n
The driver of the vehicle had had a heart attack and his vehicle crossed over both lanes of traffic before crashing into a snowbank. He was unresponsive.<\/p>\n
Hiller explained what was going through his head during those moments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to make the scene safe that was first priority, and then just going straight into first aid (CPR) it\u2019s instinct, we train, at the fire department we train on it regularly so it becomes second nature for us,\u201d Hiller said.<\/p>\n
Hiller had to smash out the man\u2019s rear passenger window, then crawled inside the vehicle, put it in park, unlocked the driver\u2019s side door, and then quickly assessed the man to learn he had no vital signs. Hiller said he got the man out and started to perform CPR.<\/p>\n
\u201cCPR needs to be initiated almost immediately [\u2026] definitely CPR saved his life, everyone should know CPR,\u201d he expressed.<\/p>\n
After performing several rounds of CPR, paramedics from Guelph-Wellington EMS arrived on scene, Hiller joined them inside the ambulance while CPR continued on the man.<\/p>\n
The man was taken to St. Mary's Hospital Cardiac Unit in Kitchener, and that\u2019s where doctors told his family that the only reason he was alive was because of Hiller\u2019s quick actions to save his life.<\/p>\n
In the last five years, Hiller has been a part of two other rescues while he was off-duty.<\/p>\n
Hiller said in all three of his off-duty rescues, everyone involved has survived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt safe doing what I was doing, but definitely it was my training [that] was a huge help, had I not been as well trained as I am, I don\u2019t things would have turned out the way they turned out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that it\u2019s an honour to receive the medal of merit, and that he\u2019s proud to be a Centre Wellington firefighter, as the organization is known across the province for its training.<\/p>\n
Jamie Hiller, Centre Wellington volunteer firefighter:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Edited-Clip-Jamie.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\nThe Fire Fighters Association of Ontario (FFAO) sent out a tweet about those awarded the Firefighter's Medal of Merit. Photo courtesy of the FFAO Twitter account.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fergus resident Jamie Hiller, who has been a volunteer firefighter with Centre Wellington Fire Department for 28 years, is being recognized for saving a man’s life. Hiller is among three recipients awarded the Firefighter\u2019s Medal of Merit, which is given to any firefighter in Ontario for commendable service above the call of duty from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":31933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[4908,4907,4911,4909,4910],"radio":[1376],"origine":[267,1369,269],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31929"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=31929"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=31929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}