A West Baton Rouge Parish woman stood before the Parish Council on Thursday night and described the moment she realized something had gone terribly wrong on what started as a routine Monday morning.

Her husband, Randy Steil, had left home on January 8 to ride his bicycle on the Mississippi River levee. They had plans to play bridge at noon. Everything was normal.

Then she checked her phone.

"I look at 10:02, and he's been at Our Lady of the Lake for two minutes," she told the council. "So I'm scared to death."

Her husband had been riding near the Brusly town limits with Jeff Allen of Addis. The two were pedaling side by side at about 18 miles per hour when Steil went down.

Allen got off his bike and called 911. West Baton Rouge Parish paramedic Mark Hebert arrived on scene in roughly three minutes. Medic 2 responded, and the crew immobilized him on the levee.

He had cracked vertebrae in the front and back of his C6, along with ligament damage. Moving him incorrectly could have caused far worse injury.

From the west side of the Mississippi River to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, the total transport time was about 30 minutes.

Six months later, Steil stood beside his wife at the podium still wearing a cervical collar.

"Had he not been immobilized, had they been late, had he tried to rise, the story would be very different today," his wife said.

She pointed to the parish's fire-based EMS system as the reason her husband is still active and recovering.

"He was in West Baton Rouge Parish's ambulance, which was there and available," she said. "If we had had to wait for Acadian, who knows what might have happened."

She thanked the responders by name: Daniel Alleman, Alexcia Booker, Dylan Dixon, Mark Hebert, Jordan Lambert, William Waldrep, Alexander Paul, and other responding personnel.