It took about 10 thrusts using the Heimlich maneuver for truck driver Aaron Hietala of Haines to save co-worker Mike Denker from choking during an incident at the Delta Western station near 1 Mile Haines Highway April 9.
“It was pretty violent. He (Hietala) was lifting me off the ground…It was like a frickin’ wrestling match,” Denker said. “I’m thinking, ‘Get this thing out of here’.. I wasn’t panicked, but I knew I was in trouble.”
Denker, the fuel distributor’s operations manager, was chomping on a breakfast burrito at about 10 a.m. when terminal manager Fred Gray stepped into his office and asked a question. As Denker got up to follow Gray, a chunk of potato lodged in his windpipe.
“I did everything wrong. I didn’t do what you’re taught as a kid,” Denker said. In addition to a “larger than average bite,” he was eating fast while multitasking, he said. “Everything just lined up wrong.”
By the time he got to the front of the building, Denker was bent over, straining to cough. Hietala walked in and saw he was in trouble. “I asked him if he could breathe. He shook his head ‘no’ and he pointed to his chest,” Hietala said.
Denker communicated through gestures that he needed the Heimlich maneuver, an emergency technique used to unblock a person’s airway by dislodging a foreign object.
Hietala stood behind Denker and wrapped his arms around him. Denker grabbed his co-worker’s hands and adjusted the placement, moving them higher, just above his navel.
Gray, who had returned when he realized Denker hadn’t followed him, phoned for an ambulance.
After about four thrusts, Denker felt some movement. He signaled Hietala to hold off, and again tried to cough. But only small bits came out and he still couldn’t breathe.
He grabbed Hietala’s hands to signal they needed to keep trying.
More than a minute had passed, Denker said, and he was starting to black out. “I thought, well, this is it.”
About five thrusts later, Hietala managed to dislodge the potato. Denker coughed it out and took “a sweet breath of air.”
After a check-up at the clinic, Denker was back to work, though he said he skipped lunch and ate only a light dinner.
He said the emergency taught him not to hesitate to reach out for help – “When you need help, you need help,” he said – and to focus while eating.
Hietala said he’d learned the Heimlich during a wilderness EMT class about a decade ago, but had never previously used it in a real-life situation. “It felt like giving someone a bear hug…and there was a lot of adrenaline going.”
Fireman Al Badgley said successfully performing the Heimlich usually takes fewer than 10 thrusts. If it’s not working, a person attempting it should readjust the position of their hands at a point directly above the navel and to try to make deeper thrusts. Knowing where to place one’s hands is critical to having the maneuver work, he said.
Denker, who still has bruised ribs, said he doesn’t know what would have happened if he had been alone.
Badgley said to self-administer the Heimlich maneuver, lean over something sturdy, such as a table edge or ideally, the back of a chair. Line up the top of the chair withthe top of one’s navel and push inward and upward on your abdomen, he said, forcing air upward.
Performed on another person or on one’s self, the maneuver needs to be done in a “fairly aggressive” way, Badgley said. Being “nice and gentle” will not work, he said.
Badgley recommended practicing the maneuver on another person.