One May afternoon, the temperature was already approaching 99 degrees fahrenheit when the first call came. The calls kept coming, and they wouldn’t stop. In the span of several hours, the fire department of Sunland Park, a small community in New Mexico nestled between El Paso and the border wall, was overwhelmed with heat injury calls. All around town, calls were coming in about migrants collapsing in the midday heat. As Fire Chief Daniel Medrano recounted, his department sprung into action, splitting up his small crew to respond to the emergencies. Only a single paramedic was on duty that day—the rest of the crew were certified as EMT basics, not able to do much more than chest compressions. He only had two fire engines and a single ambulance available.
Crews responded to a call involving two migrants suffering from heat exhaustion, stable enough to be transported to the hospital. Amid the chaos, another call came in about a critically ill migrant who was found unresponsive and without a pulse. The lone firefighter that responded to this patient frantically performed chest compressions for 20 minutes until a paramedic arrived at the scene. As they were pronouncing the patient dead, yet another call: nearby construction crews had found another woman collapsed at the edge of town, where Sunland Park empties into the vast Chihuahuan Desert. Her husband was beside her, in better shape but hysterical. The construction workers carried her body, burning with the heat of the desert, onto a driveway in the shade of a house and called for help. By the time Chief Medrano arrived on scene, she was unconscious.
Her breathing came in short, ragged gasps, her chest rising and falling erratically. A firefighter slid a thin tube down her nose into her airway to help her breathe. He placed a mask over her face, pumping air into her lungs. Another unfurled a white body bag. Together, they maneuvered her inside the bag and began packing it with pounds of ice. Suddenly, dark and thick vomit erupted from her mouth. Chief Medrano had the sinking realization that no more ambulances were available for transport. They were less than 20 minutes from the nearest hospital, but they would have to wait for a helicopter.
