A close call for former firefighter and EMT

On Friday, September 28, 2007, Mike Vogt was working with a construction crew, clearing trees on a lot in Ruckersville’s Hancock Farms subdivision when he wandered out of the clear zone and into the danger zone.
A tree fell on Vogt.
“My back was broken in 12 places,“ he says “I had seven compression fractures in my spine. Eight of my ribs were broken, my collarbone was shattered, a shoulder blade was broken, a lung had been punctured, my spleen was cut and my kidney was bruised.“ 
Later, when he was finally lucid - he was lying in his bed at the University of Virginia Medical Center encased in a body cast and an Aspen neck brace—a doctor held up a thread.
“I was told that was how close I came to being paralyzed from the neck down, or dead,“ Vogt recalls.
Vogt is a former firefighter and emergency medical technician who gives a lot of credit to the way he was “packaged” at the scene.
Emergency Medical Technician Barbara Walker, who works part-time at the County Assessor’s Office, was at home when the accident occurred. “I happened to have my scanner on,“ she says. “The main crew was already out on a call … and the location was within a mile of my home.“
On the scene, Walker, an emergency medical technician for 10 years, thought and acted on her feet.
The tree that had fallen on Vogt knocked him back into another tree.
“He was completely surrounded by debris, as well as the tree itself,“ Walker recalls. “He was barely conscious, short of breath, and very, very pale.“ So pale, Walker says, that she didn’t recognize him, even though the two saw each other frequently.
Greene County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Shifflett -also an emergency medical technician - had recognized Vogt. He was already at the scene.
Rescue work, says Shifflett, can be “harder when you are helping someone you know because emotions are at play.“ But those emotions, he adds, “can be contained with enough training: I stabilized him, and held his neck.“
By the time Walker arrived on scene, those already there were discussing proper packaging.
“I had a feeling that when we laid him flat on a backboard, we’d have a problem,“ says Walker. “We sat him up to package him.“
That packaging consisted of dressing Vogt in a vest that secured his spine “from the top of his head to the bottom of his spine,“ says Walker. “This way he was secure, but sitting up so he could breathe.“
Vogt says he was in and out of consciousness. “I did not think I was going to die, but I knew something was wrong with my left arm because I couldn’t move it, and I had severe pain in my back. It was the most pain I have ever experienced in my life.“ He remembers hearing some discussion about “how to package me” because “I had so much wrong.“
To make matters worse, the Pegasus helicopter was, Walker says, “not available. Nor could we get Air Care, the back-up unit. We did, however, get the Pegasus ground unit.“
Greene’s volunteers loaded Vogt into their ambulance and met up with the Pegasus ground unit at the intersection of Routes 29 and 33 in Ruckersville. 
Vogt says: “I remember the transfer … I remember some of the ride … I remember going under the overpass (near the medical center in Charlottesville) and I don’t remember anything else.“
His wife, Patti, who works at the County Administration Office, says that when she got “the call about the accident and was told to meet them at UVA,“ she thought he was dead.
Vogt was heavily medicated; it was touch and go, and he was in and out of consciousness.
On Sunday morning, Vogt recalls, “Some of my buddies were there, and we were having a party. They were feeding me Jell-O and holding a Gatorade bottle so I could drink.“
“I left to go get my parents,“ says Patti Vogt, “and when I got back he needed a chest tube.“
Vogt’s lung had collapsed, and the tube was necessary to help him breathe.
“The last thing I remember is hearing them say they were going to put a chest tube in, and I said no,“ says Vogt. “I told my wife not to sign the papers; she said she was going to, and they knocked me out, into a medically-induced coma.“
Vogt did not realize at the time that they would also place him on a ventilator, and that his wife didn’t think he would “make it.“ If he did live, says Patti, it could have been with paralysis or brain damage. Her attitude was: “He’s my husband. I will take care of him no matter what.“
Instead, Vogt woke up in a body cast and an Aspen neck collar - and to the realization that he had at one point been lucid enough to remember his October 1 wedding anniversary.
“His daughter works in the emergency room. He had asked her to send me roses,“ Patti smiles.
Today, she recalls a man who was one of Vogt’s roommates during his recuperation: “The man had fallen off a roof. Instead of staying still, he got up and walked. Now he is paralyzed from the waist down.
“If my husband had been handled or moved in a different fashion than he was,“ Patti concludes, “the outcome might have been very different.“