Fort Worth firefighters carried a man up an icy embankment, saving him from freezing to death in a homeless encampment.<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 Fort Worth firefighters carried a man up an icy embankment Sunday morning after finding him unable to walk in a homeless encampment, where freezing conditions had turned his shoes into blocks of ice.<\/p>\n
The Fort Worth Fire Department’s Homeless Outreach Team, known as HOPE, responded to a large encampment off East 9th Street on the city’s east side around dawn, according to the Fort Worth Fire Department. The team had visited the site Saturday offering transportation to shelters.<\/p>\n
When firefighters Louis Pantoja and Christopher Provence returned Sunday, they found a man in a T-shirt and wet pants with frozen socks. He couldn’t stand.<\/p>\n
“Just get him up there. Adrenaline, his safety, making sure he was good. That’s the only thing I was thinking of, just get him to the top,” Pantoja said. “He’s on my shoulder crying. He just wanted to get up. He said ‘get me up.'”<\/p>\n
The firefighters carried the man up the steep, icy trail, falling several times. Halfway to the transport bus, the man began seizing \u2014 symptoms consistent with severe hypothermia complications, the department said.<\/p>\n
The team rushed him to the bus, initiated warming measures and called for an ambulance. The patient stabilized briefly but experienced four additional seizure episodes before Fort Worth Fire Department Engine 1 and an ambulance arrived. He was taken to a local hospital. His current condition was not available Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Provence said the man likely would not have survived another night in the freezing conditions.<\/p>\n
The encampment was located down a roadway, under a bridge and down a steep embankment. Four people at the site had no shoes because their footwear had become soaked and frozen overnight, requiring firefighters to carry them to safety.<\/p>\n
After the medical emergency, the HOPE team transported the remaining occupants to shelters.<\/p>\n
The team \u2014 whose name stands for Home, Outreach, Prevention and Education \u2014 has made more than 300 contacts during the winter storm. Members have distributed more than 300 blankets, gloves and hand warmers, and helped take 150 people to local shelters. For 60 people who declined shelter, the team worked to reunite them with family and friends.<\/p>\n
The HOPE team operates year-round but intensifies efforts during extreme weather. The department continues accepting donations to support outreach efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth firefighters carried a man up an icy embankment, saving him from freezing to death in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-139062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}