By Ashley B. Craig
Charleston Daily News
KANAWHA CITY, W. Va. — On the night of Sept. 27, co-workers watched as Charleston Fire Department Capt. David Basham scaled a ladder and struggled to dismantle a window air-conditioning unit to help get an elderly man out of his burning Kanawha City home.
Basham further impressed his crew by taking off his oxygen mask - smoke eventually would pour out the window and into his face - and giving it to the victim so he could breathe.
It was that act of on-the-job bravery that earned Basham this year’s title of Charleston’s firefighter of the year.
Basham was honored Wednesday during a ceremony at Fire Station 2 on the West Side, along with paramedic David Hodges, who was named emergency medical services worker of the year.
The two were nominated and voted on by Charleston’s 200 firefighters and paramedics.
“I’m extremely proud of these individuals and all of our guys,” Fire Chief Randy Stanley said. “Our guys work hard, and David Hodges sets a high bar for the medics just like Dave Basham sets an extremely high bar for the firefighters.”
Basham, 45, said he was overwhelmed by the award.
The captain, who works out of Station 6 in Kanawha City, has been around firefighting for most of his life. His father, who worked for years as a railroad engineer, is the oldest member of the Malden Volunteer Fire Department in eastern Kanawha County, where he has served for 48 years.
Basham volunteered at Malden for a year or so before signing on at Charleston, where he has worked since 1995.
Sept. 27 might have started like any other night, but when firefighters were called to the blaze at the Kanawha Avenue home of 84-year-old Jim Miller, it was immediately clear the danger was immense.
Kanawha emergency dispatchers said then that the elderly man was trapped in a bedroom on the second floor. Firefighters tried to enter through the front door but found it too badly burned.
Basham then climbed the ladder to try to get the man out a window.
He said he knew Miller had been inside and inhaling smoke and heat for too long and that he likely wouldn’t be able to survive much longer.
“He’d already been in it so long,” Basham said of Miller.
With the mask, “he had a good 10 to 12 minutes of good air.”
That was when Basham handed over the face piece of the oxygen unit around his neck and managed to get it to Miller so the man could breathe. Basham continued struggling with the window air conditioner to create an exit.
Assistant Chief Rodney Winter, who was on the scene that night, said he saw the smoke began to pour out the window and into Basham’s face.
Firefighters were eventually able to get Miller out of the window. He was rushed to a local hospital and later airlifted to a burn center in Pittsburgh to be treated for thermal burns and respiratory problems caused by inhaling so much smoke and heat.
Miller died five days later.
Basham also was taken to the hospital that night to be treated for smoke inhalation.
“Even though (Miller) succumbed to his injuries later, it was that he went above and beyond what he was called to do,” Winter said of Basham’s rescue efforts. “That’s what these guys were looking at.”
April, Basham’s wife of 17 years, said she doesn’t sleep well at night when her husband is gone. She recalled the 3 a.m. Sept. 27 phone call that alerted her he’d been slightly injured while at work.
“He never calls when he has to go to the hospital,” April Basham said.
She said her husband is the hardest-working person she knows, but that he is often very modest about his work as a firefighter.
“He’s very proud of his award and we’re very proud of him,” she said.
The Bashams live in Malden with their two daughters, Andrea, 19, and Sarah, 11.
For Hodges, the emergency medical worker of the year, officials said it was a combination of his work on multiple emergency calls that won him the vote of his peers. They said in several instances, he went above and beyond the call of duty when answering calls and assisting in medical emergencies.
Hodges, who works out of Station 8 at Orchard Manor, would only say it was a series of events that transpired that might have caused co-workers to nominate him.
He didn’t want to go into detail about the people he had helped.
But that was his reason for getting into the field to begin with, he said - to help people.
His wife, Margaret, said being a paramedic had always been his goal.
Hodges, 29, has been on the job for nine years and started his career in Whitesville, where he and his wife and 5-year-old daughter, Abigail, live. He has worked in Charleston for the past six years.
“It’s a great achievement,” Hodges said, humbly.
Both Hodges and Basham were presented with plaques, $500 checks and commemorative firefighter’s helmest.
The firefighter and emergency services worker of the year awards have been given out annually since 1999.
Copyright 2009 Charleston Newspaper