CBS is reporting that longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Morley Safer has died. He was 84.
Safer retired last week after more than half a century at CBS.
The Canadian-born Safer, a 12-time Emmy winner, started at "60 Minutes" in 1970. Safer reported on a wide variety of topics over his career, including war, social injustice and art. Safer filed more than 900 reports for the CBS news magazine, according to CNN.
It is grainy footage from a "60 Minutes" story more than four-decades old. In 1974, Morley Safer came to Seattle and reported, if you’re going to have a heart attack, “have it in Seattle.”
One was a 1974 story on Seattle's Medic One program.
Safer rode in the back of a Medic One ambulance and focused on Seattle’s cutting edge approach to saving lives. For 42 years, the six-minute story has had a profound impact on the way the world approaches heart attacks.
"Saying that Seattle is the best place to have a heart attack really set the bar and set the challenge and we've worked hard over the years to maintain that." said Capt. Jonathan Larsen of Medic One.
Medic One has come a long way since 1974 and their survival rate has actually improved. "It was about one out of five back then and now it's over 50 percent which is the highest rate in the world," said Dr. Mickey Eisenberg of King County EMS.
In 1974, 100,000 people, one-fifth of the city’s population, had taken CPR. Today, those numbers have increased and saved lives. After the 60-minutes report, Dr. Eisenberg started the "Resuscitation Academy.” Twice a year, people come to the Emerald City from all over the world to learn Seattle’s groundbreaking approach toward handling heart attacks. "We decided to, in effect, take that knowledge, package it together in a course and offer it to people. It's all for free," said Eisenberg.
The lifesaving equipment has changed, but Seattle's approach to treating heart attacks has remained the same, focusing on time, teamwork and a tenacity to save lives. “It's that attitude that we'll do anything that we can, on any call, to get the best possible outcome for the citizen, Seattle figured some of this stuff out early. We were lucky. Everything came together in Seattle. We were lucky. We worked hard. We didn't have a bunch of people telling us it couldn't be done,” said Larsen.
It may have been a story at the beginning Morley Safer's legendary news career, but it has left a lasting, life-saving impression. "That put Seattle on the map in terms of cardiac resuscitation. There's no question about it. It set the bar high and it made other communities pay attention,” said Dr. Eisenberg.
Here are details from his CBS obituary: