Who We Are - Les
A family in Preston will be forever grateful to postie of 27 years, Les Furesz, for his tremendous efforts to bring a customer back to life after he suffered a heart attack, writes Peter Kirby.
Who We Are celebrates our key workers – connecting communities, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic – and beyond as well. We’re recognising people at the heart of our business, across the pipeline, as they describe who they are in their own words.
Les was delivering to the Lancashire town’ Brookfield Estate when a customer came out of his house and said he could hear lots of commotion next door.
It turned out that the next-door neighbour – a man in his 30s – was having a major heart attack and his family were panicking as they didn’t know what to do.
After asking the victim’s distressed wife to call the emergency services, Les rushed inside and despite not having administered first aid for many years, his old Territorial Army training ‘came flooding back to me’ as soon as he saw the situation.
‘The man was flat out on the settee and completely still,’ said Les. ‘His wife said she thought he’d had a heart attack. There was no response from him at all. He’d stopped breathing.’
Over the next 20 minutes with the man’s family looking on, Les calmly knelt down, crossed his hands over the man’s chest and began rhythmically pressing down.
‘It was like I immediately knew what to do,’ he said. ‘I just carried on and carried on. The lady stayed on the phone with the emergency response team relaying everything they said straight to me.’
The ambulance arrived and took the man straight to Blackpool, where he received immediate acute care at Victoria Hospital’s Lancashire Cardiac Centre.
Delivery line manager, Ian Pickles, said: ‘What Les did that day was incredible. He was faced with a situation none of us would like to find ourselves in, yet he performed CPR on the gentleman for over 20 minutes, with the man’s wife and two young children present the whole time. Imagine the scene and how calm and collected he must have been.
‘What he did next leaves me staggered. He left the property after the ambulance arrived and despite feeling exhausted, after having a large drink of water, he simply picked up his bag and carried on with his round. He never gave it a second thought. Not only that, he didn’t call me to ask for help or even let me know what had happened.
‘Les is a quiet and unassuming man, who is conscientious about his job and popular within the team. He is a credit to Royal Mail and a credit to himself and his family.’
