Bicyclist reunites with first responders who saved his life

When Chris Evans got on his bike last Aug. 9, he planned to ride 30-40 miles from Rehoboth Beach, along the Lewes-to-Georgetown Trail, and take back roads home.

But, when he got to the trail crossing at Sweetbriar Road near Lewes, his life changed forever.

“I usually look both ways before I cross and, if there’s a car coming, I stop for the car to go through. There was no car coming, so I went through the intersection. But, I guess there was a car coming,” Evans said.

An SUV driven by a 17-year old slammed into Evans. The crash was horrific, and the injuries Evans, 60, suffered were devastating – multiple broken bones, damaged kidneys and liver, a brain injury and more.

Evans, his wife Amy, and his son and daughter, Max and Madison, came to the Sussex County Department of Public Safety headquarters in Georgetown Dec. 22 for an emotional reunion with many of the army of first responders who mobilized to save his life.

There was Ginny Meerman, the 911 dispatcher who answered the initial call and quickly assigned units.

“I was praying for you,” Meerman said. 

Charlie Kortlang, a retired firefighter from Mount Vernon, N.Y., and his wife Betty were driving by and became the first ones on the scene. She stopped traffic, while he applied tourniquets to control bleeding.

“I’ve been an EMT since ‘73. I’ve seen some ugly stuff, but you were a mess,” Kortlang said.

The Georgetown American Legion ambulance crew that was on the way back from Beebe Healthcare heard the call on their radio and made a right turn.

“[We] started resuscitation, and you did not have a pulse,” said Parker Shandrowski, one of the three paramedics. “But by the time you got to Beebe, you did.”

There were many others from Lewes Fire Department, the Beebe ER team and a life flight helicopter that came from Cape May to fly Evans to Christiana Hospital.

Dr. Paul Cowan, Sussex County paramedic medical director, was on duty in the Beebe emergency department that afternoon.

He said Amy Evans, Chris’ wife, wanted their family to learn more about the effort to save her husband.

“They didn’t understand anything that happened in the field, except they knew something extraordinary happened,” Cowan said.

That extraordinary thing was that Evans received whole blood six minutes after the accident.

“The supervisor came and handed me a unit of blood to give to you,” Shandowski said. “I started an IV, held it there and squeezed as hard as I could.”

Delaware is the only state with a statewide EMS blood program. Paramedic supervisors in each county carry a unit of whole blood. Each Delaware State Police helicopter started carrying a unit of whole blood earlier this year.

The program went live in 2023, thanks to the vision and persistence of Jordan Dattoli, a paramedic field training coordinator.

“It was like a scene from ‘Apollo 13’; I have a square box and I need to make a round thing,” Dattoli said. “There was nothing out there as far as guidelines on how EMS and whole blood work, so we made a lot of it up.”

But handling blood is not as easy as putting it in a cooler and riding around. The system must meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration, medical and legal requirements, to name a few.

The Evans family watched Dattoli demonstrate a specialized cooler that keeps blood at its optimum storage temperature, between 2 and 6 degrees. Another device, developed by the Israeli military, warms the blood to 100 degrees before it’s given to a patient.

Each unit of blood costs $550, and the coolers and warmers are a few thousand dollars each, according to Dattoli.

Blood has a shelf life of 21 days. Five days from the expiration date, Christiana picks it up and exchanges it for fresh blood. 

But no blood is ever wasted. The expiring blood is used at Christiana, where there is more immediate demand.

Cowan estimated that Evans received 70 units of blood in the first couple of days after the accident.

“That is seven times his circulating blood volume. That means there were 70 people in Delaware who took time out to donate blood,” he said.

County paramedics work in close partnership with the Blood Bank of Delmarva to make sure blood is handled correctly and that there is enough to go around.

Kristen Frederick, BBD vice president of operations, said it starts with people rolling up their sleeves.

“If our community makes blood donation a habit, we’ll be able to continue to save lives and have these good stories,” Frederick said.

Frederick said they are preparing for a post-Christmas shortage, because donations typically fall off over the holidays.

“This was a case where the system worked perfectly, and everybody in the room knows whole blood was the absolute difference. There’s no chance [Evans is] here today without whole blood in the back of the ambulance,” Cowan said.

Sussex County also has the world’s only accredited EMS simulation program. A room at the Georgetown headquarters contains the back of a real ambulance where paramedics train with dummies and fake blood.

Soon after Evans’ accident, the Delaware Department of Transportation changed the warning signal at the trail crossing on Sweetbriar Road near Lewes to require that bicyclists and pedestrians push a button to activate the flashing lights.

Evans is about to have his 20th surgery.

He said his ultimate goal is to recover and get back on his bike.

“It’s part of my life. I absolutely want to get back on the bike. I rode that trail so many times without an issue, and I’m hoping to do it a few more times without an issue,” Evans said. “I’m here because they do what they do. It’s amazing, because every part had to happen that day. If one part didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here.”