UNSUNG HEROS:
HOME INSPECTORS SAVE MORE LIVES

PLI’s 2015 LIFESAVER AWARD

Harry Noble

Brad Barnes

One of the hardest jobs for home inspectors is reminding people that home inspectors  save lives.
Partly, modesty gets in the way of making the point.  Yet it is a point we should be making.  The media firehose spews stories agog about gadgets like Apple watches and 3-D movies, or life imitating Twitter with Trump.  Just try to find a story about home inspectors saving lives.
You might think the Kentucky Board of Home Inspectors would make it point to put out news releases about it.  Not the first news release.  Not one.
But the data is clear as a pristine window.  Home fire, and resulting deaths, injuries and property loss in home fires, were cut in half since home inspectors started helping home owners in the 1970, for example.

Home/structure fire deaths in America steadily dropped, for example, from 6,505 civilian deaths in 1977 to 2,855 in 2013 (the most recent year reported). Injuries dropped from 25,310 to 14,075 and direct property loss fell from $15.5 billion to $9.5 billion (in inflation adjusted dollars) over the same years.  A key reason was that the number of structure fires was more than cut in half from 1,098,000 to 487,500 in 2013.]

    Home inspectors don’t get all the credit, of course.  Researchers and policy makers found safety improvements.  Manufacturers and builders helped install them, etc.
But in the end, it is the home inspector who stands between each family and fire hazards in the homes they buy.
Home by home, one house at a time, America’s home inspectors are key to keeping our neighbors and communities safe.
We could go on.  Some PLI community events and classes do, digging into data like that.  Good as it is, data is not touching.
Most of all, there are the human scale, one-on-one stories.  Nothing sheds a brighter light on how home inspectors save lives that these up-close and personal examples.
Here’s one of the best from 2015.
Around Thanksgiving, two Elizabethtown home inspectors knocked on the door of a home there.
Harry Noble and Brad Barnes, the inspectors, with Sapper 6/Harry Noble Inspections, tried the door bell, and then knocked on windows.
No answer.  The order said the owner would let them it.  It was starting to look like a bad day.
Suddenly, the older lady inside came to the window.  Brad coaxed her into pushing the window up.
“You could see the lady moving around inside.  She was completely disoriented.  She couldn’t even unlock the door lock.  She couldn’t get her thoughts or words out,” Harry remmbered.  “She got one word out: ‘shit.’”
Brad and Harry began to wonder if she was having a stroke.  Disoriented.  Staggering.  Unable to do routine things, like unlock the door.
Harry knew people who had strokes. His uncle had one.  Brad was medic for 9 years in the Army.  He was thinking “stroke” too.  This was turning into an emergency.
They got on the phone and called the listing agent.  The agent got in touch with the lady’s  daughter.  Then the daughter called Harry and Brad right back.
Harry told them if she couldn’t get there, they’d be calling 911.
Around 80% of strokes are “ischemic,” caused by narrowing of the arteries of the brain, or by clots that block blood flow to the brain. They are often preceded by a transient ischemic attack (TIA), a “warning stroke” or “mini-stroke” that shows symptoms similar to a stroke.  Symotoms include sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body; sudden confusion or problems understanding; sudden difficulty speaking; sudden vision difficulty in one or both eyes; sudden dizziness, loss of balance or coordination, or difficulty walking; and sudden, severe headache with no apparent cause. Getting to emergency stroke treatment in the first three hours makes huge differences in the outcomes.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death for women – partly because more women than men live alone when they have a stroke..

[LINKS:  http://www.cdc.gov/stroke/treatments.htm; and  http://www.stroke.org/understand-stroke/impact-stroke/women-and-stroke.]

     The daughter got there a few minutes later.  The lady was still wandering around, fiddling with the window.  Couldn’t unlock the door.  So the daughter unlocked it.
As soon as she saw her mother inside, she called 911.
A few days later, the daughter called Harry and Brad to thank them.
According to the doctors at UofL, they saved her mother’s life, she said.  Apparently the stroke had just set in just before they got there.
“I’m glad that you all were persistent.  Most people would have just left,”the daughter added.
She had a point.  If Brad and Harry had walked off, they would not have been the first.
So why did they keep talking through the window – to a woman who could not say anything back?
“That’s the way home inspectors are.  We’re curious people.,” Harry says.
Then Harry and Brad actually did the inspection while the paramedics were there.  After all, time was running out for their client too.
All in a day’s work?  We think so.  Real heros are not looking for a blaze of glory.  Real heros think they are just doing their job – and they happened to be at the right place at the right time when the need came up.
“One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal,” explained Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who safely crash landed U.S. Airways Flight 459 in the Hudson River near Manhattan in 2009.  Every passenger made it out alive.  Scully was just doing his job.
Modesty is a virtue.  Fine.  But these men did one heck of an outstanding job.  Every home inspector should be proud to pass on the story.  These guys probably won’t.  The Board of Home Inspectors probably won’t.  But here’s to ‘em!
Reminding people how important home inspections are for their own protection also is a virtue.  Because ignorance is not bliss.
Home inspectors are the front line of public protection – one house, one neighbor, at a time.22