National Guard and Worcester rescue workers deliver baby during the peak of the blizzard

By Chris Stuck-Girard, Globe Correspondent

Storm, be damned. A Worcester baby was determined to arrive during the middle of the blizzard and did so at her mother’s home — with the help of a team effort by Worcester rescue workers and the National Guard.

Baby Nohely couldn’t wait to arrive.

About 2:30 a.m., Ericka Bueno went into labor and called 911. Within 10 minutes, a military field ambulance, used to reach areas too difficult for conventional ambulances, arrived as Bueno’s water broke, according to a statement the Massachusetts National Guard released this afternoon.

“Upon arriving on scene, it was quickly determined that the woman would not reach the hospital before giving birth and must deliver at home,” Sergeant Kenneth Hickey of the National Guard said in the statement.

The baby girl, Nohely, was born around 3 a.m. The guardsmen and the paramedics then took Nohely, Bueno, and her boyfriend, Joel Gonell, to the hospital, the statement said.

The soldiers -- Sergeant Kenneth Hickey, Specialist Joshua Catalano, and Specialist Derek Demelo -- put themselves to work by shoveling the walkway to Bueno’s home, clearing a path for the stretcher.

“It was definitely a blessing to have them there,” Bueno said in the statement. “It’s just good to know that we had so many people behind us, that it wasn’t just the EMTs, that we had the National Guard there.”

“I was just a regular person giving birth, and they went and they shoveled us out and they made sure that we made it to the hospital. When my daughter grows up, I’m going to let her know that we had a lot of very supportive, important people there to make sure that she got to the hospital safely,” she said.