Ottawa paramedic wins bravery medal,
Governor General will bestow honour at Rideau Hall
Paramedic Chris Bugelli had just begun his night shift on March 13, 2011, when the call came in: a suicidal man was in the water in a drainage ditch behind the McDonald’s at the South Keys shopping mall.
Bugelli and his partner were dispatched to back up another emergency vehicle, both arriving as the late winter light was starting to fade.
Bugelli and his colleagues tried to coax the man, who was immersed in the icy water up to his neck, to climb out of the ditch, but he refused. Moments later, he disappeared beneath the surface.
What Chris Bugelli did next has earned him a Medal of Bravery, a national honour that recognizes acts of courage in hazardous circumstances. He receives the medal Thursday from Gov.-Gen. David Johnston in a ceremony at Rideau Hall.
Despite below-freezing temperatures, Bugelli stripped off his coat, set his radio down and waded into the frigid, neck-deep water.
“I’m not going to watch somebody drown in front of me,” he explained Wednesday.
As he made his way toward the man’s position, Bugelli stumbled over something submerged — perhaps a shopping cart, maybe some branches — and nearly fell. “I got hung up pretty good and I got stuck.”
He managed to free himself and reached the man, who was visible just below the surface, where he had been submerged for 30 to 60 seconds.
“I grabbed him by the arm, torso, trunk, I’m not sure, and pulled him up,” Bugelli said.
He then “half-dragged, halff-loated” the victim to the side of the ditch, where Ottawa police Const. Christine Shulz was waiting.
The two passed the man up to other paramedics, who dragged him to safety.
Despite his time underwater, the man was conscious and breathing. “He wasn’t impaired in any way as far as vital signs,” Bugelli said.
Bugelli, though, needed some attention. He was so cold that his legs weren’t working properly.
“There was still ice and snow on the ground that I was crawling through.”
Moreover, his asthma was acting up. “I was a little bit out of breath.”
Bugelli’s colleagues took him to The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus, where medical staff checked for hypothermia and made sure his breathing wasn’t impaired. He was treated for a small cut on his shin, given a tetanus shot, and got into dry clothes. “I was soaked to the core.”
Then, after filling out some paperwork, he finished his shift.
At the time, it never occurred to Bugelli — a 29-yearold native of Newcastle, Ont., who moved to Ottawa to take the paramedic job after graduating from Durham College in 2004 — that he was risking his life.
In hindsight, he understands why some people might think he was.
“When you’re dealing with people who are not in a normal mental state,” he said, “you never really know what’s going to happen. I didn’t know what was in the water. I didn’t know if he was going to fight me, if he had any weapons.”
Still, he resists the idea that he is a hero. “My goal in my shift is to prevent people from dying, especially if I can do something about it. So this, to me, is just an extension of that. How am I going to look at myself in the mirror knowing that I watched this guy drown?”
Getting the bravery medal, he acknowledges mildly, is “definitely interesting. I never thought I’d end up with something like this.”
The Medal of Bravery isn’t the only honour Bugelli has received for his actions that March day. In September 2011, he received the N.H. McNally Award for Bravery, a provincial honour named after the founder of Ontario’s ambulance system.
And on Wednesday, Bugelli was publicly commended for his brave act at a meeting of city council’s community protective services committee.
Bugelli’s actions were certainly out of the ordinary. “I can’t say I go jumping into freezing water every day,” he said.
But the job of paramedic is one of constant surprises.
“We deal with a lot of interesting things and a lot of really bad things,” Bugelli said. “I’ve got a fairly large list of things that I’m probably not going to forget.”