LOWELL -- Back at the Moody Street fire station after fighting Sunday evening's fire at the home of renowned local artist Janet Lambert-Moore on Walker Street, firefighter Bob Carroll was nauseous.
As fellow firefighters comforted him, Carroll felt pressure high on his chest, near his throat, and started sweating profusely.
"We ate right before the fire so I was hoping it was just indigestion," he said yesterday.
Instead, he had a heart attack that, at least for a moment, took his life.
"I just mentioned I don't feel good and that's the last I remember," he said while lying on his back in a bed at Lowell General Hospital with his left arm curled under his head. "I guess I just slumped in the chair."
The firefighters jumped into action when his heart stopped.
Capt. Joseph Roth performed chest compressions; firefighter Larry Finn got a defibrillator; and firefighter John Bue put on a bag-mask ventilator to supply oxygen, said Fire Chief William Desrosiers.
Carroll said he started to regain consciousness and heard voices as if her were waking from a deep sleep after Finn shocked him with the defibrillator.
As an EMT, Carroll saw the paddles for the defibrillator and knew he was in trouble. When the paramedics arrived, he listened to their conversation as they worked on him and knew he was suffering a heart attack.
Roth went into the ambulance with Carroll and paramedics again shocked him with a defibrillator.
When he got to the emergency room at Lowell General Hospital, medical personnel there shocked him a third time.
He immediately underwent primary angioplasty.
"The guys I was with I want to thank or I wouldn't be here," he said, rattling off a list of names of firefighters who were nearby as well as the paramedics and hospital personnel.
Carroll lay in his bed yesterday with his wife, Mary, nearby. He expects to be discharged today and start six weeks of cardiac rehabilitation at the hospital.
There were no white lights or relatives appearing to him when his heart stopped, said Carroll, who is six-feet three-inches tall and weighs 275 pounds.
"Just darkness," he said.
But when he woke up, his mind raced. He thought about his 6- and 8-month-old grandchildren.
"A lot flashes through your mind," he said.
It is believed the heart attack started while fighting the fire at Lambert-Moore's house.
Carroll was working on Engine 3, feeding water through the hoses when he went inside the home to help tear down the ceiling looking for hidden embers.
"It started there at the fire so the fire triggered it then carried on and got progressively worse," he said.
Barry Gannon was the last firefighter to die on duty, Desrosiers said.
Gannon was working for Engine 10 on Old Ferry Road about 25 years ago when he suffered a heart attack after fighting a fire, according to Desrosiers. Other firefighters at the time didn't know Gannon was feeling poorly and went to other rooms. When they returned, he was dead.
The Fire Department is already trying to document other firefighters who have died in the line of duty.
