Even though he may well have saved several lives early Sunday morning when he jumped out of his westbound vehicle, grabbed his fire extinguisher, and crossed a highway median to put out a fire in a van that had been carrying seven young men coming home from a night on the town in Mississauga.
Chatelain, a full-time Peel paramedic by day and a Canadian Forces reserve medic in his spare time, dealt with the blazing vehicle, then began to provide emergency care to four young men who were thrown out of the vehicle and suffered severe injuries in a crash. They weren't wearing seatbelts, police say.
"It's something we do every day of the week," Chatelain, who has lived in Canada since he moved her from France in 1988, told The News this morning. "There are 6,000 paramedics in Ontario and 1,000 medics in the reserve and the fact that this gets a little more publicity doesn't detract from the work they do every day."
But this case was a little different admitted the Mississaugan, who lives near Credit Valley Hospital. He was off duty and on his way home from a national paramedic competition in Durham Region when he came across the accident on Hwy. 401 at Avenue Rd. just after midnight.
"You don't really expect it," Chatelain said of the crash scene. "You don't have the safety net of the ambulance and the rest of the crew. The adrenaline starts flowing a little bit more."
After extinguishing the fire, the paramedic broke the upside-down van's windows, checked to make sure no one else was inside, then began tending to the serious injuries of the four people who had been ejected from the vehicle.
"I didn't do this alone," stressed the paramedic, who is the information technology director of the Streetsville-based Peel Paramedic Association. "I was helped out by three other off-duty paramedics" and an off-duty police officer who also happened quickly onto the scene. "We just stuck to the basics. We all knew what had to be done."
With only plastic gloves and one stethoscope between them, the five professionals managed to keep all four of the badly injured young men alive. The four thrown from the car were taken to hospital, two of them in critical condition.
Chatelain keeps the fire extinguisher in his truck in case his own vehicle ever catches fire.
OPP Const. Dave Woodford said the van was travelling faster than the speed limit, but alcohol was not a factor.
The van driver is facing charges, police say, after his vehicle went out of control at a high speed in the left express lane of the 401, tilted onto two wheels and veered across four express lanes of traffic. The vehicle then hit the guardrail separating the express and collector lanes, throwing the four unbelted occupants out of the vehicle.
Investigators agree the crash could have been worse — much worse — had Chatelain not been driving by.
jstewart@mississauga.net
