Medford firefighters rescue resident among extreme case of hoarding

MEDFORD, Mass. — Longtime Medford firefighters say they’ve never seen anything like this hoarding situation before. The most challenging part for firefighters, they say, was making a pathway to the door of the house to get the victim out who was going into cardiac arrest.

“Fire truck, and ambulance, and that’s it. I didn’t stick around,” said Desal Lung Jang Wa, a neighbor.

Desal Lung Jang Wa was just coming home from lunch when he saw the commotion outside of his neighbor’s house on Higgins avenue in Medford.

“This is the first time we see an ambulance coming in,” said Jang Wa.

Medford Deputy Fire Chief Brian Cronin says, the 911 call came in just before 2 p.m. for a person with cardiac arrest.

But what firefighters were walking into, left them stunned.

“I was pretty the worst hoarding situation he’s ever seen in 20 years. In order for them to perform cardiac arrest, they had to actually clear out floor space to move the patient onto the floor, we need a hard surface,” said Medford Deputy Fire Chief Brian Cronin.

It took firefighters about 35 minutes to clear out a path from the second floor bedroom to the front door, and into the back of the ambulance.

“You can see from their driveway there are cars with flat tires, but I don’t see any other thing like that,” said Jang Wa.

Longtime neighbor Jang Wa says, he never went inside of his neighbor’s house.

“They are very nice. Very friendly. We don’t really have a lot of interactions,” said Jang Wa.

Cronin says firefighters got the woman out of the house.

“It was very difficult. It took all six personnel on the scene to safely extricate the woman from the scene,” said Cronin.

Their next challenge was to keep manual CPR going while en route to the hospital.

“The woman was a larger size and we weren’t able to use the Lucas machine, which performs CPR for us very well,” said Cronin.

Cronin says before and during the pandemic they have been responding to even more calls where they are seeing an increase in the number of hoarding situations going on.

“We are getting more calls for assistance for mental health that we are running into these type of situations,” said Cronin.

Medford’s fire captain has been hospitalized after this call with back injuries trying to lift the woman. He is expected to be okay.

As for the victim, the fire department has reached out to Mass General and we are waiting for an update.

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