Mar 12, 2008 12:56 pm US/Pacific
Fire Captain, 43, Dies From Amoeba Infection
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
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Matt Moore, 43, died from complications from a brain-attacking amoeba. Moore was a 17-year veteran of the Murrieta fire department.
CBS
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Experts from the CDC warn against swimming in certain bodies of water in warm climates.
Firefighters risk their lives everyday. They race into burning buildings without hesitation. They know the dangers.
Matt Moore, a 17-year veteran of the Murrieta fire department who reached the rank of captain, knew those dangers well. To his friends and colleagues he feared nothing. The Murrieta Fire Chief, Paul Christman, has said of Matt Moore, "he maintained his hope an courage right to the end, as we knew he would."
The end came for Moore, 43, on Monday. But Moore didn't die in the line of duty or by battling a blaze.
Perhaps even sadder, this brave firefighter went down to a rare complication from meningoencephalitis. Translated, Moore was infected by an amoeba which invades the brain. Moore leaves behind a wife and three teenage children.
You don't get this amoeba from doing anything heroic or dangerous. And therein lies the irony. Moore could have contracted this illness by doing something as routine and mundane as swimming in a lake where the amoeba exists.
Paul Magers reported on just such a case this past November about a young boy who contracted the brain-eating amoeba at Lake Havasu.
Experts from the CDC (Center of Disease Control) say these amoeba live in nearly half of the lakes in warmer parts of the country. While infections are said to be rare, they have spiked in the past year.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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