Medic pulls girl, dogs from burning house
OFF-DUTY paramedic Michael Formica knew something was wrong when he heard a mother screaming as flames engulfed her Harristown home.
It was a scream he had heard countless times before when responding to fatal traffic crashes.
“The scream was saying, ‘I’m a mother and that’s my child,’” he said.
Without hesitation, Mr Formica rushed to the mum’s aid.
He pulled her from the
burning house, got some basic information about her daughter trapped within then entered to find her.
His actions on that day in September 2019 saved the child and earned him a Bravery Award but could have easily proved fatal.
“I just made the decision that I had to go in,” Mr Formica said.
Aided by the light on his phone, Mr Formica crawled through the thick black smoke, following sounds in a bedroom.
He hoped to find the girl, but instead found a trapped dog and rushed it outside before returning to search the second bedroom.
There he found a second dog but no girl.
“I was quite short of breath and starting to panic because I couldn’t find the child,” Mr
Formica said.
“I had a moment when I thought this is where it ends for me, in a burning house.
“I saw her in the garage as I was heading back in.”
He pulled the girl to safety as the firefighters arrived.
While Mr Formica suffered only minor injuries, the full gravity of the situation hit him the next day.
At the time he was the Officer-in-Charge of the Murgon Queensland Ambulance Station on secondment in Toowoomba to help with the bushfire season.
It was a task he was no longer up for so he took time off to aid his mental health.
“My staff and family supported me, but I will go to the occasional house fire as a paramedic and the smell puts me back there,” he said.
Despite the risk, Mr Formica said he would do it again.
“If my eight-year-old son were in there, I would hope that someone would take a deep breath and have a crack,” he said.
MR FORMICA WILL RECEIVE HIS BRAVERY AWARD AT A CEREMONY AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE IN BRISBANE AT A DATE TO BE SET.