S1E5 Exporting EMS to Ethiopia

In this episode, Lee and Pat discuss training 200+ nurses and physicians to work on Ethiopia's first nationalized EMS system.  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're a first responder, you know the chaos that comes with answering the call. Join Lee and Pat now as they share another story of resilience, process the heavy burdens of profession, and rediscover the divine purpose behind the badge and the uniform. It's time to move beyond just surviving the shift. It's time to find peace in the pressure and faith in the chaos.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Hey Lee, we're back, man, right? It's good to see you. It's good to see you, Pat. You know, I was thinking earlier, I think it was November. This is this is April. Um April 1st or 2nd? This is the second. The second of April, my birth son's birthday tomorrow. Uh it was November I was last up here. We've had a cold winter since.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Yeah, it's been cold. We've got a lot of snow this winter. Yeah. Um probably got, I'd say cumulative, maybe two, three feet. Yeah, we feet? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

I think we got about six inches in Raleigh overall anyway. Enough about that. Man, you know, I've been thinking we've you especially, we've been on quite an adventure together. Uh since our since our EMS days and and our time at the community college where we were sharing an office. A lot has happened and a lot of it has revolved around um a ministry that you really have developed in Africa.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Well, it's amazing that how much has taken off after kind of the post-retirement time frame of after, you know, a lot of things are picking up after we're we're done with our careers. Yeah. You know, I had left um um our job in fact as a faculty at EMS, and and and really things were changing pretty fast.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Changing a lot and fast, and I think one of the keys to it was a man that we met separately, but kind of uh it's fascinating the way it all came together. Well, I we'll have to tell the story. So you got a better memory than I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

So this this is a this is a this is a real adventure story, isn't it? And what I love about this story, Pat, is that it brought um what we have been doing together for so many years together after we were done in our careers in EMS. It really kind of it's really it we're still working in EMS. It's just a different type of of um approach to emergency medicine, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 2:12

Well, true, but I mean I still teach a little bit on the side. I'm doing a seizure class next week, but no more reform on education. Yeah, the full-time gig.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah. So things are transitioning. It doesn't mean that we're in retirement, we completely give up what we've been doing. No, it's just changed. No, it changes. And and likewise, this is part of the story. So we're gonna tell you a really cool adventure story. And um and this is um one of the things I love about the story are two really important people in my life who are not believers um commented and they said, This is kind of like a miracle, isn't it? And I and I couldn't agree more that this is a miracle and and how this God works within our lives to pull things together. And in this particular situation, it certainly brought us together to do some really amazing work in Ethiopia.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

And it revolves around a man named Desta, who is a major missionary force in Africa. In fact, he he is a missionary from the country of Ethiopia, and he has eight hundred and fifty missionaries now in his flock, really, that that report to him that he sends out to share the gospel.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Um this this is a man that was uh uh persecuted um for his faith. And he was he was beaten for his faith back in the 70s.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Now to put things in perspective, today he's 69 years old. I know that because I talked to him recently. Back in the 70s, he would have been, you know, uh uh early 20s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

So let me pull the story into context a little bit. And so this is Pastor Desta, and there's also another character in this in this in this theme here, too, is a dear friend of ours who is is Dr. Emmy or Dr. Emnett Tesife Simper. And she is a physician in Hawasa, Ethiopia, that is in charge of the country's first modern EMS system. She was put in charge of it by her government to start it, and she was given um the funding and the resources to have um the first of the 20 first 24 ambulances, um, nationalized ambulances for the country. So what happened was is a bit a lot of stuff was kind of happening at the time. But um, Pat, you and I left um as faculty from our our last job, and I was thinking at the time uh that I was gonna get into with Kelly and I we're gonna go into missions work, and we that's where we thought we were kind of going the route that we're kind of going down. And it just wasn't happening, and um, it just wasn't quite happening, and we weren't sure why. And um at some point during our kind of waiting phase, we had to make a decision um that we needed to work, and um, and that's when the an opportunity to work at Appalachian State University for the nursing department up here as the director of healthcare simulation, and um it was a great job. I really enjoyed it, but it was funny because I was thinking that this was a transition for me of getting away from Africa. I my I've been so focused over the years, and you've heard my story, um, of trying to advance the EMS in a pre-hospital setting in Africa for a number of years, but I kind of just I did I felt like it wasn't happening, it just wasn't going where I needed it to go. So I took the job up here almost as a consolation. So you thought it was over. Yeah, I kind of thought, you know, I'd retire up in the mountains, I'll finish up my last couple of years in in the state system, I'll get done and kind of retire up here. I thought just a good opportunity for it. Um, but it's not what happened, though. I mean, and that's that's the that's the amazing part of the story. I I took the job here, and this is a this is considered a rural university within the North Carolina system, uh, but they have a small program here that is really fascinating. It's called the Nell, it's called the Mandela Washington Fellowship. Um it allows um students to come um from not students, allows leaders from Africa to come to U.S. universities to get um classes on education, uh classes on leadership skills and things like that. And they're from all different types of professions. Some are doctors, some are political leaders, but they're all young leaders within the African community. And as they came to our university, um they discovered my simulation lab. And there's so many different cool things about it. It's one of the most attractive things to see at the university, is something it's a high tech, it's a lot of fascinating things. Um, many of them were healthcare providers, but not it wasn't just them that were interested. The tech guys were interested, the education guys were interested. Um, so everybody was coming around my lab and it just developed relationships with these folks from leaders from around Africa. But then one day I had a um I had a request for a meeting, and it was um there were three um women from Ethiopia. Um, one of them um was Emmy, Dr. Dr. Dr. Emmy, and um she had come because she heard my story about wanting to advance emergency medicine in Africa, and she came by my office and um we had this conversation. We knew it was of God. Um, she was looking for someone who can teach their folks um emergency medicine, and I had a a background in that and a desire to want to serve Africa. Specifically pre-hospital emergency medicine.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

It was kind of like Because she's an emergency room physician herself, isn't she?

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah, yeah. So we met and um we just hit it off. We really did. And the first thing I did, I got off the phone, I was like, wow, this is amazing. Um there's an opportunity maybe to go back to Africa, but th through this university up in the mountains of Appalachia.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Which was totally not on your radar when it happened. No, no. It was just a consolation prize.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

I thought it was a consolation prize. And but what it what happened was just amazing, right? So um Dr. Emmy and I decided that we were going to apply for some U.S. State Department grants to see if we couldn't um get started, kick-starting this EMS system that we had, right? So the idea was from Dr. Emmy was that she's going to train 200 nurses within the Hawassa Ethiopia University system there to work on ambulances within the modern EMS system.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

And Hawasa is a fairly large city not too far from Addis Abama.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah, it's a it's I think that uh 50,000 people live there, so it's a fairly large um um town and it has a university there, it has a hospital there. Um it's lacking a lot of things in the hospital. We'll talk about that as we're kind of moving along. But but um there was a desire from Dr. Emnet to advance pre-hospital medicine, and so we applied for um two specific grants. Um one was the Mandela Washington Fellowship, it's a reciprocal grant for the program that she was in. And we did get that um in 2023. We were awarded that, uh, along with we were awarded the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund, which is also a State Department grant for $10,000. And that's um part of how we started to come together. That's where the medical side came in. So after I told Kelly about about this possibility, the second person I called was you, Pat, right? Right. And and your response was very shocking to me, right? So your response was hold on a minute, Lee. This is this is strange. Yeah, this is strange. But at the same time, you got to meet our our our newest friend, um, Pastor Desta.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Well, at the same time, I heard from my pastors at my church in Raleigh that one of their friends was coming from Ethiopia. He was a pastor, a missionary named Desta. And I had no idea at that time, nor did you, that God was going to link us up together with Desta and Emmy to start this uh this mission over there.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

I think the question I asked you originally was, what are your chances of them living close by? And I mean, you know, they a little bit, they're neighboring cities. Right. Um so they s they serve the same airport and they're not too far from each other, and um it put it together, it didn't it. So not only did we accept that grant to go over to train the 200 nurses, but at the same time we also accepted the challenge to go down to teach his missionary leaders how to do first responders.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Right? And what a concept. This is a community that does not have um pre-hospital anything, right? If there's an emergency, there's no rescue, there's no EMS.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

I was talking to Emmy one night, I said, what would happen if somebody was in a bad, let's say motorcycle wreck, there's motorcycles all over the roads there. Yeah. Um how long would it be before they would be in emergency care? And she said, four hours. And you you know as well as I do that four hours after a major trauma, you've bled out, you're dead.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Well, the whole concept, and we discussed this at a earlier um episode, that it's a problem, right? When if there's an injury, if there's a mass casualty, it's on the the bur the burdens on the community to get them to the front gates of the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

In fact, when you and I first arrived in Hawassa on our first trip to Ethiopia, and we went to the local hospital, which was an eye-opener for me by itself, the first thing I saw was a car pull up right in front of the front entrance, and they opened the trunk and they pulled out a victim.

unknown 11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Carried them inside. That was their way of getting a hurt person to the hospital.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Yeah, it it's very lacking of being able to move people around in an emergency system. Very primitive. Yeah. It's very difficult. So that was the whole concept. We got these grants um from the U.S. State Department to go over and to help this community develop an EMS system for very little money. You know, this is um at the time, so these two grants were a total of $15,000, which included in this was for our travel to go back and forth. And then that's we purchased a high fidelity simulation mannequin in order for do us our our training. So we we went over there and we did um we trained 200. We did 200 nurses.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

And we did something uh new for them. We introduced them to simulation where we would actually use not just mannequins but human beings as simulation subjects and throw put them in the back of the ambulance and transport them around, and they had a ball. Well, I've never known this type of training before.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

It's so funny. I I remember one of the professors saying, Why is he on the ground? Talking about you. And um that's the way we roll, isn't it? You know, and so you know, it's a different way of learning. It's very Socratic in Ethiopia, where you know that professor is you you have you know the respect level, which is important, but it's there it's not a peer-to-peer type of educational model. What's this teacher doing on the floor? Right? So so that I mean, for us, that was very exciting. One that it pulled us all together, right? So we're just recently leaving our faculty positions, and now we're both traveling to each other.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Okay, so when we're in Hawasa and we're training those 200 uh nursing students, which was a great experience, that was pretty much for Emmy's benefit and for her people there at the hospital in Hawassa. Where does Desta fit into this?

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Well, that was which made it beautiful was um it all pulls together, right? So what when we were writing this grant, one of the things that Dr. Emmy Emmy uh requested that that we explore the idea of expanding out into the general community to get them on board for emergency preparedness or at least some basic training to be first responders.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

In fact, at one point she she envisioned getting every household in Hawasa trained in basic CPR. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Certainly a lofty goal and something that we've been working towards here, and that's a new concept for this for this community. And that's the beautiful thing about this, right? Is it has so much potential. So we the the classes that we focused on when we first got there, I thought were great. I mean, they're very appropriate. Um one was on it on um some basic and some advanced airway skills, one was on trauma assessment and and and some trauma. Rapid load load and go, right? And the third one was really unique. We brought a nursing educator with us to set up this EMS system with a um a culture of acceptance to this is a difficult job to do, and how do you best manage the stress? I don't think really, probably anywhere in the world was that included, that topic included on uh EMS system's beginnings. Right. And I think that's wonderful. We're it's proactive thinking, very different. Dealing with stress to avoid things like PTSD. And and and getting and stop demonizing uh, you know, the idea of you know post-traumatic stress disorder and and you know having to keep things quiet. That's a you know, it does only damage to people when you're hiding, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:50

So we did this training in Hawasa for Emmy, and then we also did similar training for Desta and his missionaries.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

So we then traveled from Hawasa um to a community called Durame. Um Durame is a very remote um city. It is a city, but it's very remote. To give you an idea, it's kind of in the central southern part of um of Ethiopia. Um, but you have to, it's right in the in the areas where the Nile River originates. So you'll see, I think it's called like the the Blue Nile. There's a couple different rivers there that are tributaries to the Nile River. So you're you're right in the heart of Africa at this time. So we get down to Darami, and and um, and and that's where we met Desta for the first time. And well, that's the first time I met Desta. You had met him in my church in our hands and um but we have been communicating for some time with the idea and the plan is that he has a number of missionaries that he would like to be trained to be first responders so that they could be sent down into areas of Ethiopia along um Somali border and some of the other um areas that are a little bit dangerous to go to up in the Sudan area as well, that um not everybody can just go down there. So they were training their their local missionaries in basic first aid to go down to serve the Islamic refugees along the Somali border.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

And so we actually did that. We went to Drama and we spent um we've done this twice now.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, a couple days, a few days there um showing. But we taught using simulation, right? We uh we were teaching by experiential learning, which was very new. Using the Good Samaritan as an example. Yeah, right. So now we're we're pulling these two together. Um I I found it really fascinating is that Dr. Emnet and Pastor Desta did not know each other at the time. However, Dr. Emnett grew up in a local church outside of Hawasa that had been raising money for Desta and his group for all those years. All those years, like so like raising money as a child within the bot, you know, within the fact that the introduce um these two um really just amazing people in the community. We're able to introduce them at the Hawassa hospital. And I know um Dr. Emmett was very um proud. I was I was amazed as we we kind of toured through the hospital, um, people recognized Pastor Desta. He's he's a pretty well-known um person in that community.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Well, I heard somebody suggest that he's like the Billy Graham of of Africa.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Well, what makes them like that is is fascinating too. And that's kind of where we're leading, is we're leading to a mountaintop experience here, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Before you go there, you you say that Desta was persecuted for his faith at some point earlier in his life. What did he kind of ordeal did he go through? Is that something you share?

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Yeah, uh he has um two books out. Um one is The Power of Prayer, and the other one is Desta Means Joy. And he has two books, fascinating books, talks um, some of them are um uh autobiographical, but the the one that's most interesting was back in the 70s 70s, the um a communist party from I I believe it's the Italian Communist Party that came into Ethiopia and took over for a while. Um and they got rid of the church, the local church. Um took a lot of the young people and put them in the military. And um Desta it was a young Christian at the time, and um he went into hiding. He was gone for about a year or so, and then when he came back to see his family and friends, he was captured by the um the military. Um he was um he was made to he was told to denounce um Christ and uh he refused, and he refused. Um when he refused, he was he was whipped severely and and and has scars on his back. And imprisoned. He was imprisoned for a period of time, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

So he has a lot invested in this.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Well, I think his story uh uh drove a lot of the local people to respect him for what he did. And I think that's that's where he developed a lot of the respect from the community to do what he's doing today.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

Now in Hawaii excuse me, in Durami, the small town where Desta's mission mission is headquartered, there's a mountain called Amboricho. Amboricho, mm-hmm. Tell us a little bit about that and the significance of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So the really the start of his uh ministry, uh beyond when he was persecuted, um, was in this local town. And and and dominating just outside of town is this large mountain at 10,000 feet. And um, in years ago, 25 years ago or more, um, a small group were climbing up to the top of the mountain to worship. And a part of that were these young people that decided that they're gonna bring their money together to buy snacks and water for the people who are coming up and worshiping. And um, and Desta has suggested to these folks why don't you invest some of that into some of the folks to be missionaries? And that started this whole process. And over the last 25 years, it has grown to be over 850 missionaries that are all local Durame Ethiopians, or excuse me, um Ethiopians in general, they all over the country.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

And we in a we have an organization in America that helps to support this called AIPM.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yep, and Russia, International Prayer and Mission Movement. Um and it's it's it's still it's not a church, it's a prayer movement that is sending out missionaries all over Ethiopia and even outside Ethiopia with a desire to send missionaries all over the world. Um Desta comes over.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

This is a Christian organization.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

It is, and um, matter of fact, Desta um um got his PhD in theology from um one of the theological um schools out in Washington, Washington State, yeah, just outside Seattle. I forget the name of the university. Um and um and he's also supported through the AIPM USA, which are mostly a group of pastors and other believers that um helped to support some of the financial responsibilities of having 850 missionaries and and all the other projects that are. And you're actively involved in that. I'm on the board right now, and I love this organization because this is a an indigenous um missionary um organization.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Well, I want to push this forward for a minute, Lee, because you just had a real great adventure when you went back to Ethiopia and actually climbed that mountain, Amboricho. What happens on that mountain?

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Well, we're we're getting there, right? So this that was the climax for me. And it we we went back again, though, right? So we went that first year in 2022, and then we went the following year. And this time we did a little bit different. Instead of training the leaders, we trained the missionaries themselves as a part of the the grant that we're doing, making them the we were saying we were going to go over and do a first aid class, and when we showed up, there were over 200 people attending our first aid class.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Um I think there were about between five and six hundred in the church.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Well, what that what certainly we expected certainly we identified very quickly that we are not breaking out into small groups and training people how to do skills. This is not going to happen. We had the opportunity and we ra we raised some money to bring over some um EMT level first aid kids with us and and so we had to be quick on the fly and and change our uh um our delivery from uh small groups to um more demonstrations yeah uh on the stage. So calling calling members up. So Pat tell us what tell us what we did.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Well I mean in in where the way we used to teach, we would put our students to work. You, you're up. In fact, we used to uh have a a thing where they would all draw a a card out of the deck, you know. I'm an ace hearts, you have the two of clubs, okay. Remember your number, then I'd take them all back and I'd shuffle them up, and then I'd have them pick a card, and that was the next student running the call. They were running the next scenario. So um So here tell me about that church.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

What so we we we had it changed from teaching people how to control bleeding in in a small group situation to doing it up on the stage. And we used the the um the the the verses that we used were of the Good Samaritan.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

They were. And after we gave them the Good Samaritan story, we would run scenarios up on the stage and we would actually point at individuals and say, You come on up.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

We acted as we acted out the Good Samaritan for them, right? And what a beautiful way of showing and they were so engaged with a large group like that. Um obviously there's only so much you can do in a short period of time, but it's changing how people perceive what strengths they have, knowing that they can take control of an emergency situation and stop somebody from bleeding, right? I'm something as simple as that.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Well, and we actually, after we demonstrated it to them, we had some of them come up on the stage and actually perform it. So they showed that their their fellow missionaries that, hey, I can do this, so can you.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Yeah. So that that was kind of the gist of that trip. We we did also, I think, at the end of that trip, we we suffered a little bit. You know, we um we both got sick. We both were sick, and we were sick the first time too. But um I I particularly got really sick where I ended up um at the hospital that we were training at.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

We had to start an IBM and start I mean sugar.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

That was really unique, very surreal. I I I did I you know I became a little pre-sinkable, and but we got we got through it. It was a hard one. So we uh finished up that trip, and that was our second trip um under or representing the U.S. government through the US State Department, and it was what a blessing to be able to do those. Now, the third time that I went to Ethiopia was just this last um October, excuse me, last January. And this was a little bit different trip for me. It really was. I had more, I have a different different focus. Instead of being um driven on training and in medicine, um, for me this was a victory, this was a worship. Um, this for me was uh was an adventure that I needed to go on.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

So every year, Desta has some type of a prayer meeting up on top of Amberito Mountain, and thousands of people come. Tens of thousands of people. And this is in January.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Yeah, this is um they have to you have to climb a mountain to get there. So it's um they have um a series of steps. There's they've actually put in steps onto the mountain now. So there's two sets of 777 steps, and um oddly spaced apart. It's a really kind of interesting climb. But but for me, this was on near the eve, on just it was like days before that my year anniversary of my brain surgery, and I felt so blessed that I was able to physically um get to this place to get up the mountain and and to really experience something I've never experienced in my life. It was worship I've never seen before ever in my life.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

It was truly remarkable. So you've got 50,000 Ethiopians prostate on the ground.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

So, yeah, so I'm with a group, I think there were 11 of us, um, most of which were pastors. Um there was a there was a group of um three brothers, the Day brothers, who are bluegrass um uh musicians from um Washington State. And they brought their instruments with them. Yeah, and they invited me to bring my uh mandolin and sit in with them, and I got to play uh for over 50,000 people. It was just really amazing. I we played bluegrass gospel on top of an Ethiopian uh mountaintop. And the deskto preached, right? Yeah, so we climbed this mountain. We got there the day off. We we work our way up this mountain. It was a struggle for me.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

And they've already been up there for a while.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Well, the whole crowd. So we had just thousands of people all kind of funneling up this mountaintop, and you come from all different directions, but there's one main road going to the top. And I remember getting to the very top, and there's just so many people around, so many people interested and wanting to talk to me, take pictures with me. But it wasn't until I got to the very top and I've reached the um where the worship area was, and what I saw was just truly amazing. There were tens of thousands of people laying on the ground praying, and they're not praying, their prayers were were beautiful. They're praying for the world, they're playing to each country around the world, they're praying to each direction. Um, they're there it was really remarkable. It was so overwhelming for me to see, just to see a people. And um, and then and then they started preaching. And um, a lot of it's in Americ, so it's not in a language we understand, but we're getting little pieces of the translation in there. And what a celebration. It was an all-day event at the top of the mountain.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

So it was kind of a culmination of all your Ethiopian experiences. And one, uh, do you see any more trips coming up, Lee?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

I I certainly hope it's um in God's will. I certainly pray it is. I I think that um, and I hope it is for us too in the future. I do. I think um, you know, one, we make a good team at what we're doing, and um, we were able to make impacts for people in a very unique and different way, using our skills from working in the streets.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Yeah, yeah, you know, they they always have responded very positively to our our training. They they're hungry to learn, and they've always been so welcoming to us. Yeah. The uh the the it's a loving people, and they truly do reflect the love of Christ and make you feel like you've been loved when you leave that place.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

I uh certainly I I always feel that way when I go. One, they're very generous people. Um they quite often uh think of others first. And you can see this just in the population. When somebody needs help, there are people jumping ready to help. And it's not just because we're foreigners coming in. You see that within the culture itself, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Hey Lee, thanks for sharing this. Hey, what a what an awesome um it was certainly a great uh adventure, but what a thank you for letting us share this. This is a great opportunity to be able to share that. You can do some really unique, fun things in retirement, right? That's right. Yeah. All right, we'll talk to you next time. All right, brother.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Thank you for listening to Answering the Call Podcast, Finding Faith in the Chaos. Please join Pat and Lee for future episodes and engage with him and other listeners on Facebook and other platforms. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss what's next. This episode may elicit strong emotions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. We are not mental health professionals, and the stories or advice shared here should not replace professional medical help. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. You can call or text a 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 in the US and Canada, or contact your local emergency services.