Allina paramedic’s stray from routine leads to evacuation of burning home

[KARE 11, December 29, 2017] Sometimes the most simple decisions have profound impacts in life.

You could say that was the case on Thursday for Kathy Reitan, a paramedic for Allina Health EMS.

Leaving their base in Anoka, she and her partner Bruce Anderson took a right on 7th avenue.

“Generally we go out and we take a left. This time traffic was so bad we just happened to go to the right and as we came around the corner my partner and I noticed heavy brownish yellow smoke coming from the chimney. We both knew that's not a good color,” Kathy says about the smoke they saw coming out of a house.