FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—April 16, 2019
Vancouver, Wash. – Last week, Clark Public Utilities Environmental Resources Manager Jeff Wittler received the NWPPA Safety Heroism Award at the association’s 2019 Engineering & Operations Conference on April 9 in Spokane.
Wittler received the award for his life-saving actions on May 16, 2018. En route to a baseball field, he noticed a commotion near the train tracks. He pulled over and learned that a teenager had been hit by a train and was bleeding profusely on the other side of the train tracks. Wittler grabbed a belt from a man standing nearby, jumped up and over the slow-moving train, applied the belt as a tourniquet on the teen, and held it tight on the femoral artery until medics arrived. The medics who arrived on the scene said the quick action and timing of getting the tourniquet on, and the perfect placement saved the teen’s life.