LANDIS — Emergency calls can go south very quickly for first responders, but the actions of three Landis firefighters during a July dispatch prevented the incident from becoming a tragedy.

Firefighter Ethan Yarborough, 33, and engineer Todd Bittle were working their shift at the Landis Fire Department on July 23 when a call came in at 6:43 p.m. about an unconscious victim in a Dollar General parking lot.

Wasting no time, Yarborough and Bittle raced to the scene, arriving at the Coldwater Street location in less than four minutes. Volunteer firefighter Rodney Wilhoit also responded to the Dollar General store from Station 58, which is also in Landis.

“We pulled up in the parking lot, she was unconscious laying in the parking lot beside her car, and a guy was attempting to do chest compressions,” Bittle said. “He was an amputee with prosthetics, so he couldn’t get down on the ground like he should.”

The crew checked for a pulse and could not find one, so Bittle began CPR with Wilhoit’s assistance while Yarborough retrieved the automatic external defibrillator (AED) from the vehicle.

Using the AED, the crew gave the victim a single shock. By this time, EMS had arrived and, shortly after that, got the victim hooked up to an auto-pulse CPR machine that delivers consistent, exact compressions, which resulted in the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC).

ROSC is the resumption of sustained cardiac activity associated with significant respiratory effort after cardiac arrest.

“We got her on the auto-pulse, and it took over chest compression,” Yarborough said. “It got her stable enough to load her into the ambulance.”

The firefighters’ efforts were not done yet. Yarborough climbed into the driver’s seat of the ambulance while Bittle drove the fire engine as an escort vehicle to Atrium Health Cabarrus Hospital.

“If it’s cardiac related, (EMTs) let the fire personnel drive so that two people can stay in the back,” Bittle said. “If anything goes downhill, they have multiple hands instead of just one person.”

The 38-year-old victim was taken to the hospital for treatment and eventually recovered. The victim’s mother, who was on-site at Dollar General, informed the first responders that her daughter had a history of heart problems.

Thanks to the actions of Yarborough, Bittle and Wilhoit, the problems she experienced that day were not her last.

Landis Board of Aldermen recognized the three men for their life-saving measures during its meeting on Monday night.