Twin cows, walkie-talkies and other Daufuskie Island emergencies

Public safety has come a long way on Daufuskie Island.

A wildfire raging since Friday on the remote island with no bridge shows it.

One of the tools being used is a Bluffton Fire District ladder truck.

When Geraldine “Gerry” Wheelihan was the primary first responder on Daufuskie, her main tools were a clunky walkie-talkie and a truck. She was the longtime volunteer head of EMS.

She got more sophisticated equipment before she passed away in 2004, but it started very simply.

In fact, she told the Island Packet, when she was a child on Daufuskie, “If something went wrong you just had to get better or die. That was all there was to it.”

As an adult, Wheelihan let South Carolina State Board of Health Nurse Anne Pitts see patients in her store during her visits to Daufuskie.

Paul Holmes, captain of the Hilton Head Island Rescue Squad, came to the island in 1965 and gave Wheelihan first aid instructions, Billie Burn says in her history of Daufuskie.

Wheeliahan was then authorized to help with minor injuries, using her own truck for transportation.

She later got fully-equipped ambulances from Beaufort County.

Here’s an old-school Daufuskie emergency from Fran Heyward Bollin’s book, “Remembering the Way it Was”:

“It was time for the Wheelihan cow, Moo Moo, to deliver. Many a cow had been birthed on Daufuskie, but the obstetrics this time were different. Instead of standing up, as most cows do to deliver their calves, Moo Moo lay down. It was to be a breech.

“Following closely the telephone advice of the veterinarian, Gerry recruited four men to pull the calf out, back feet first, with a rope, without slowing up. Then, while celebrating the emergence of the newborn and nursing Moo Moo, Gerry made another discovery.

“ ‘There were another set of feet in there,’ Wheelihan said, ‘I couldn’t get the vet on the phone, so I called Paul Holmes, and he talked us through that delivery. It was the second set of twins on Daufuskie in 40 years.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2017 at 4:31 PM with the headline "Twin cows, walkie-talkies and other Daufuskie Island emergencies."