Firefighters Deliver Baby On Station's Front Lawn
AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) - Firefighters in Aurora delivered a baby on the front lawn of Station No. 7 early Sunday morning.
The mother-to-be and her mother were on their way to a hospital, but could not make it there in time. They pulled over at the fire station and banged on the door for help.
Around 4 a.m., the fire crew awoke from a dead sleep to the frantic knocking. At the same time, the crew got a call-out. They couldn't leave, however, since their engine was blocked in by the car of the mother-to-be, which her mom had parked in the station driveway.
"As the driver, I'm thinking, what clown parked their car on my ramp?" said Zac Varela, an engineer with Aurora Fire Crew No. 7.
He soon discovered the very pregnant mother-to-be inside the car.
"So we laid her down in the grass. We laid a blanket out, put her in the grass, and we were prepping for birthing this baby right here in the front lawn," explained Varela
And that's exactly what they did. Firefighters helped mother and child through the labor until an ambulance arrived just in the nick of time.
"No sooner did we pick her up and put her in the back of the ambulance that those sprinklers kicked on and started spraying everywhere," Varela said.
Both mom and baby are doing well.
"The vast majority of baby births go off without a hitch," said Varela. "Those babies are going to be born whether we're there or not. We're just there to make sure everything goes smoothly, and if something goes sideways, we're there to correct it."
Luckily, the help was there at the station, and not out on another call.
"Aurora is a very busy city, and we're a very busy fire department. So, fortunately we were here when they needed our help."
Melissa Garcia has been reporting for CBS4 News since March 2014. Find her bio here, follow her on Twitter @MelissaGarciaTV, or send your story idea to mkgarcia@cbs.com.
