iStockphoto
Your odds of being bitten by a snake obviously increase when you serve as the director of a reptile zoo, and one man in Kentucky had a brush with death after being bitten by an animal in his care. He was thankfully saved after EMTs who responded to the scene administered the antivenom he had on hand, but they could end up losing their licenses despite saving the victim’s life.
The black mamba is widely viewed as one of the deadliest snake species on the planet. The predator that’s native to sub-Saharan Africa releases one of the most aggressively proliferating venoms in existence every single time it chomps down, and there is not a single recorded case of a human surviving an untreated bite.
The Jameson’s mamba, on the other hand, “only” boasts an 80% mortality rate, but it goes without saying you do not want to end up on the receiving end of a bite from a snake that’s packing a neurotoxic venom that slowly causes your body to shut down while inducing paralysis that can kill you in just a few hours.
The director of the Kentucky Reptile Zoo was unfortunate enough to learn about the repercussions of one of those bites the hard way earlier this year, and the EMTs who should have been hailed as heroes are somehow in trouble for helping to save his life.
An EMS team in Kentucky is facing a hearing for administering antivenom to save the victim of a Jameson’s mamba bite
The Kentucky Reptile Zoo in the glorified town of Slade lures in visitors with the promise of “one of the largest collections of venomous snakes in the world,” which includes cobras, vipers, rattlesnakes, and the Jameson’s mamba that was at the center of the emergency call that sent an EMS team to the attraction in May.
According to Fox19, James Harrison, the zoo’s director, spent multiple days in the ICU after he was bitten by the snake while working.
Eddie Barnes, one of the two EMTs who arrived on the scene, said Harrison informed them, “I’m going to die” if they didn’t administer the antivenom he thankfully had on hand. They subsequently consulted doctors at the Clark Regional Medical Center before injecting him with the cure, which stabilized him before he was airlifted to a hospital at the University of Kentucky for further treatment.
Harrison’s wife praised them for saving her husband’s life, saying:
“Every physician that we’ve talked to about it, and about the course of the bite, agrees that they were heroes and did what needed to be done to save him. That’s who I want working on me in an emergency.”
However, Barnes and his partner have nonetheless been summoned by the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services to answer for a violation of a policy that states EMTs are only allowed to administer antivenom if they’re classified as “wilderness paramedics” (they seemingly could have gotten the green light from their EMS director, but they were unable to reach them during a situation where every single second counted).
Barnes noted he not only had an ethical responsibility to save Harrison but also asserted he believes he could have faced criminal charges if the antivenom had not been administered.
The board meeting is scheduled for September 30th, and here’s hoping it merely serves as a formality where the people overseeing the hearing use it to apologize for wasting everyone’s time.