In Case Of Emergency by ...Kaine Agary

Never leave the house without a photo ID. Never leave home without telling someone your destination. Someone in your household should have the telephone number of your closest friends. Your closest friends should have the telephone number of your parents or spouse. Never leave home without enough cash to get you back home (vex money, as my grandmother used to say). On and on… these are tips that usually make an appearance in discussion about safety and emergency response. If you have never been in an emergency situation, it is easy to take these tips for granted.

Sometime ago, it was the US recession of 2001/2002. Many of us had watched our pension accounts lose value within weeks. A friend of mine put it succinctly when he said that his account was haemorrhaging cash. Some of us held on till the accounts were nearly at zero because what you are told is that stock market investments are for the long haul, give it time, etc. So we held on. But it was a rough time for many who lost their jobs, their homes and some, their sense of self. One of such people was an Ivorian friend of mine who was my senior in college. She was one of those very focused, high-achieving students who worked hard to take advantage of available opportunities to advance herself and find her own American dream.

While in college, she had held summer internship positions in top financial institutions on Wall Street. She graduated from college a semester early and took up an offer in investment banking. Two years later, she was accepted into Harvard Business School. She completed the programme and once again was offered a top position on Wall Street. Things seemed to be on the upward swing for her, then she lost her job to company downsizing and finding a new job in that economy proved a greater challenge than she had expected.

One evening, as another college friend and I sat watching television, my home phone rang. It was the New York Police Department asking whether I knew this person, if I had any information on how to contact her family members, whether she had any allergies, and a long list of other questions.

Apparently, my friend had gone to a McDonald’s store that morning and had sat at a table there the whole day, not interacting with anyone. When it was closing time, the McDonald’s staff told her that she had to leave, but she was unresponsive so they called the NYPD. When the police got there, they tried to get some information from her but she was still not speaking, so they went through her purse, ascertained her identity from her driving licence and called me, the only contact with a New York City number in her phone book. I was able to inform them that she did not have any family in New York. Her immediate family members were in Cote D’Ivoire and France.

But that was really all the information I could offer. The police officers decided to take her to a psychiatric hospital and that was the last thing that I knew about my friend. She had suffered a nervous breakdown and the person closest to her in New York City did not have sufficient information to help her. I wish I could have done more, but there are certain situations that you never anticipate and, therefore, never prepare for. After her discharge from the hospital, she cut off all communication with our circle of friends and went underground for many years.

In 2007, a friend of mine was left for dead after his car had a head on collision with a commercial Volkswagen bus. Luckily, some good Samaritans who came to the scene of the accident stopped to help. They got his phone and called the most recent number on his call list. Luckily, it was his childhood friend who told them what hospital to take him to and then called my friend’s mother to inform her that there had been an accident. What that did was it cut down the time that could have been wasted in trying to save his life if he had been taken to the General Hospital as his rescuers had planned. His family had a relationship with the hospital where he was taken to and that meant that they could avoid delays that come with requests for deposits and police reports.

These days, many phones are set up to store and identify the owner’s emergency contacts. So we can do our part to make sure that information is available to people who are in a position to help us, should the need arise.

What I think we need more training on and awareness about is how to help people in emergency situations. Recently, there have been a few videos posted on social media, showing people in distress, in one case it was a drowning victim, and the people around them unable to properly assist, either with medical intervention or calling for emergency services. Often, private citizens are the first responders in emergencies but their good intentions can sometimes cause more harm, which is why trained emergency response personnel are very important.

When I was growing up, 199 was the dedicated line for emergency calls throughout Nigeria. The first few pages of the NITEL phone books had a list of numbers to call in case of emergency. Today, there are several numbers, depending on what state you live in. Although efforts are being made to establish emergency call centres and publicise their telephone lines, and install a single emergency number nationwide, we need more enlightenment on the proper way to respond in an emergency. Such an enlightenment effort is important so that when people pull out their phones in an emergency, the first thing that they will do is telephone for help before recording for the pleasure of gore-thirsty viewers on social media. Or, maybe they could put their phones down and render first aid that will help and not harm the victim(s) until professional emergency services arrive.