In 2015, Altoona firefighter Jeff Hall was on a crew that rescued a family from the back porch roof of a house filled with smoke from a basement fire.

One family member was a young man with severe autism, who often spent time in his bedroom, behind a door with a deadbolt lock.

The rescue might not have gone smoothly if the young man’s parents hadn’t managed to bring him onto the roof, Hall said this week during a multi-agency training at The Arc of Blair County designed to help people with disabilities, their families and caregivers and first responders deal with emergencies when disabled people are involved.

If firefighters had had to enter the house to rescue the young man, they might have had trouble getting into the bedroom and might have had difficulty convincing him to cooperate — especially given that they were strangers dressed in heavy turnout gear, which could have been frightening, Hall said.

This week’s training was intended to prepare all parties involved to deal safely with both household emergencies like fires or sickness and with community emergencies like floods, snowstorms, windstorms, power failures, mass shootings or hazardous chemical spills, officials said.

The most recent such training occurred in 2019, but the momentum it generated was dissipated by COVID, and agencies hoped to restart it with this week’s event.

One emphasis was for people with disabilities to develop self-reliance.

“Personal resiliency,” said Blair County Emergency Management Director Mark Taylor.

That can be especially important in community emergencies, when paid caregivers sometimes shift their focus from their clients to their own families, according to Maria Brandt, executive director of The Arc.

That happened during Hurricane Katrina and also during the Three Mile Island incident near Harrisburg in 1979, when an acquaintance of Brandt’s was working in a day program for disabled people, Brandt said.

All that acquaintance’s co-workers at the time left their place of employment to take care of their own families, leaving the acquaintance to deal with all the clients’ needs alone, Brandt said.

It’s critical to have a plan for emergencies, officials at this week’s event said.

It’s also critical to have a “go bag” packed with medications, a first aid kit, communications devices, food, water, toiletries, a flashlight, batteries and other things that may be needed if it becomes necessary to evacuate — for example to a community shelter.

People with disabilities need to know “what it looks like” when an emergency occurs and what the ramifications are, according to Brandt.

Thus, if there’s an extended power failure, a battery-operated wheelchair can’t be recharged — nor can a phone or tablet the person relies on for distraction and amusement, she said.

That means that plans installed on a phone — but not written on paper — may not be available, Taylor said.

Also, with a power failure, it will be dark inside at night, which creates issues for people afraid of the dark, Brandt said.

Caregivers need to know the ramifications, too.

Their clients — or for parents, their loved ones — may get agitated during emergencies, and it’s important to be aware of how to soothe and distract them, Brandt said.

The other perspective

For first responders, it helps to have foreknowledge when going into situations involving people with disabilities, according to Beth Moore-Weirich of the Hollidaysburg American Legion Ambulance Service.

That information can sometimes come from a 911 dispatcher.

It can also come from refrigerator hangers that the ambulance service has distributed to community members, so that on entering a house and finding one, the workers can see what special accommodations are needed, she said.

That can include avoiding “triggers” that make autistic persons combative, she said.

One common trigger is standing over someone who is seated, she said. It’s a better idea to grab a chair and sit down, so the parties are face-to-face.

Nancy Fisher, a paid caretaker for a 29-year-old man in Altoona, came to the event for “a refresher.”

She has worked as a caretaker for individuals with disabilities for many years.

“I like helping people,” she said.

It began at age 13, when a friend of her mother’s needed someone to care for an elderly woman, so that regular caretaker could go to a special event.

While that event was going on, the woman had an “accident” in bed.

At first, “I had no clue” what to do, Fisher said.

But she gathered her wits and decided to deal with it like she would if she were changing the diaper on a baby, she said.

That settled her mind, and since then she has loved taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves.

Last year, she dealt with a serious emergency as a caretaker.

Her client was a childhood friend.

He had a heart attack, for which she immediately began CPR.

Because of that, however, she couldn’t get to her phone.

So she yelled out to “Siri” to call 911 — and to put it on speaker.

That order to the virtual assistant was successful, and a dispatcher who came on the line instructed Fisher what to do.

Unfortunately, her friend died not long after an ambulance took him to the hospital.

But she is able to assure herself that she did all she could for him.

She remains “mad at him,” however, for leaving her, she said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.