Courtesy of News14 Carolina-Raleigh
What started out as a routine call to a car fire turned into a day firefighters at Raleigh's fire station twenty won't soon forget. They had managed to put out the flames. And Lt. Mike Clayton was gathering information when he collapsed suddenly. "Firefighter Roof came out saying Mike Clayton has coded and we all know what that means. That's pretty bad. It took a second for it to sink in," said fellow firefighter Nelson Massey.
Firefighters Nelson Massey and J.J. Roof are trained to handle crisis. But this tested even them. "When you are working on a family member it's a little different you really have to lean on your training just to keep the emotions out of it. It took a second to realize that's one of own down. Ok get over that shock and then go to work and that's what we did," said Massey.
When they realized Clayton was having a heart attack, they pulled the defibrillator from their fire engine just like they've done so many times before and saved the veteran firefighter's life. "We worked well. Everybody meshed well together. Everything fell into place and today it saved one of our own. You don't expect to have to do that in a career but we did it today and I think Mike will be with us for many more years," said Roof.
The experience leaves the heroes shaken. "You don't expect that we're invincible,
