With his wife by his side, New Haven Lt. Jay Schwartz lay in the hospital Sunday replaying in his head the mountain rescue that nearly killed him.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- With his wife by his side, Fire Lt. Jay Schwartz lay in the hospital Sunday replaying in his head the mountain rescue that nearly killed him.
He was at the base of the East Rock cliff listening to a 911 operator, on the phone with a woman hanging on for her life. She couldn't hold on for much longer.
"I ran the whole thing through my head and I really wouldn't change anything that we did," Schwartz said while facing months of recovery and grueling rehabilitation before he can return to the job he loves.
Rescuers faced a dilemma. Schwartz and Jim Kearney, both veterans of intricate and dangerous rescues, talked it over.
"We weren't going to sit there on the rock and see her fly by us," Schwartz said. "It didn't quite work out by our plan."
Firefighter Miguel Rosado, who was a few feet away trying to direct the firefighters at the top of the rock to the woman, also started to free climb when the men worried the top rescuers wouldn't reach her in time.
They made it to within 10 feet of her when Schwartz fell. Days later, he couldn't say what happened. Did falling rocks knock him off? Did the loose rocks he stepped on give way, sending him plummeting down as his two colleagues looked on in horror?
Despite her husband's dangerous job, Debbie Schwartz, who is an emergency room nurse, never worried about him as long as he was with his crew. But she got a call from her brother-in-law, a West Haven firefighter, that Jay was hurt but alive.
In the end, Schwartz was lucky. He fell more than 60 feet. He suffered a gruesome, compound dislocation of his ankle that left it dangling, and multiple abrasions but no internal injuries. When Kearney saw him fall past him and into rocky protrusions, he thought the department would be planning a funeral.
But in a room at the Hospital of Saint Raphael, Schwartz delivered a friendly message to the lieutenant who covered his next shift on Squad Company 1.
"He told him, 'Don't get used to that spot,'" recalled Fire Chief Michael Grant.
Jay Schwartz met Debbie on the job. He was a young firefighter working as an EMT on an emergency unit when he walked into St. Raphael's emergency room where Debbie was working as a nurse.
They've been married for 21 years, he answered correctly with his wife at his hospital bedside over the weekend.
Schwartz, a 25-year veteran, always has been a hard charger. He became one of the officers on Squad 1, the engine company that specialized in operations like rope rescues and extrications. He is a member of the regional FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team with several other members of the department.
At home, his wife said, he sometimes spends hours on his cell phone critiquing recent operations with other firefighters.
"I talk to him more than I talk to my wife," quipped William Gould, acting battalion chief and close friend.
At the base of the rock, Schwartz and Kearney made the call.
"We made a conscious decision to do what we were doing."
As they neared the 19-year-old Yale student, who was tucked in a recess in the rocks, the firefighters saw a tree just below her.
If they could get a rope around that tree, Schwartz thought, "it would have put the thing to bed right there," Schwartz said.
He wouldn't reach it.
Kearney and Rosado rushed back down to reach their colleague. Meanwhile, rescuers from the top had been lowered by members of Squad 1 and Squad 2 to the woman, and Firefighter John Cretella was swinging back and forth trying to reach the woman in the recess but unintentionally sending loose rocks down onto Schwartz.
Kearney and Rosado used their bodies to shield Schwartz. Grant ordered the summit rescue to stand down until Schwartz could be brought to safety. Schwartz, not without gratitude, wasn't surprised by their action, or that of Cretella and the rest of the rescuers.
"They worked to the peak of their training," he said.
His recovery is expected to take months. Schwartz had a ruined tendon removed from the bottom of his foot, and rehabilitation is expected to be extensive.
Debbie Schwartz said she holds no ill will toward the climber, who along with her male companion were charged with reckless endangerment and violating the city ordinance barring climbing on East Rock.
The young woman's father called Grant after the rescue to express his gratitude.
From Debbie Schwartz's perspective, the young woman could never have imagined when she started out up the rock what would happen, and she probably saw her husband fall from her vantage point.
"She'll have to recover, too. I hope it was a learning experience," Debbie Schwartz said.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
