Breaking In

I was working overtime at a station that I've only been to once before when we got toned out for a medical. Fortunately, it was on a major cross street and I knew how to get there without relying on the captain to navigate for me.

The call came in for an elderly female fall victim. It was also reported that PD was on the way as well. This didn't make sense to any of us. It sounded like a straight forward trip and fall. So, why was PD responding? We arrived right behind the police officer and made our way to the apartment where we found the apartment manager trying several different keys to unlock the metal security door. The woman inside was calling for help and scratching at the door.

So, that explained the cops being there.

The manager didn't seem to have the right key so we went back to the rig and grabbed "the irons" to force our way in.
While the firefighter and I went to the rig for the tools, the cop decided he would give the door a try. I don't know if he was trying to make a point that they didn't need to rely on the fire department and our forcible entry skills or if he just legitimately thought he could pry a metal security door open with his bare hands. In any case, when we returned from the rig we found him hanging from the top of the door with his feet up on the wall and yanking on the door like a monkey trying to escape it's cage.

He stopped doing that as we approached and the captain and firefighter forced the door with the irons then went to work on the apartment door.
The manager quickly spoke up that her keys might work on that door. The single minded firemen who really wanted to force another door had to stop and concede that we should probably try that first. This time her key worked and we made our way inside to the patient. She had fallen in her kitchen and had possibly broken her arm. Otherwise she was in good shape. The ambulance came in pretty close behind us, so other than a spinal assessment, history, and cursory exam of the arm I passed off patient care and treatment to them.

The crew did a great job on forcing the door too. The screen had a couple scrapes and a small dent but was still fully functional. Nothing like getting to break stuff without actually breaking it.

Tonights Episode: A Spectre Looms Over District 47

This was one of those shifts that you just can't believe that all this stuff is happening on the same day. Not only the same day but in the same district. And not only the same district, but within a 2-3 block area. All told, we had four deaths in less than 12 hours: a suicide by hanging (not on that call), a nasty fatal car accident, and a code blue for a ninety year old after a square dance.

Warning: Graphic subject matter ahead. I try not to be too gory here but this can't be described in any other way.

The most dramatic call, of course, was the car accident. I have not been on an accident that grisly in a long time, if ever. It came in for the next district over, but since I was driving the truck that day (OK, Quint) we responded as well; the truck goes to all auto accidents. Our dispatch reported that there was an auto accident in the intersection right in front of Station 47 and that Engine 47 was on scene reporting two possible DOAs.

When we were a few blocks out we radioed to Engine 47 asking if they had an assignment for us. E47 radioed back, "We're not there, we're at the training exercise" which happened to be a few cities away. My captain radioed dispatch to confirm that someone was on scene ahead of us. Dispatch replied, "Affirmative, Engine 47 is on scene stating two possible DOAs". E47 again replied, "No we are not on scene. We are not in the city limits." It seemed now that we were going to be first in and that changed our game plan considerably. We weren't arriving to help out anymore, this was going to be our scene.

(It turns out that one of our off duty fire captains had witnessed and reported the accident, stating he was at Station 47 which, I guess, dispatch took to mean he was E47 on scene, hence the confusion.)

We arrived at the intersection and saw a horribly mangled car that had come to rest in the bushes in front of the fire station, almost hitting the station itself. The roof had been ripped about half way off and the steering wheel was on the ground about 6-10 feet away. I drove through the intersection and parked alongside the station just past the wreck. My captain and firefighter went to face-to-face with the off duty captain, the police, and check the scene while I put my rig in pump and prepared to pull a hose line just in case. I was the only paramedic on my rig so before pulling the line, I quickly followed my captain to see if we had any more pressing medical issues. That's when we saw the other car. It was on it's roof about another 100 feet or so away on the drill grounds of the fire station.

The off duty captain had said there was one DOA in the near car and possibly one in the far car. On my way to catch up to my captain I looked in the first car and did a double take. I then needed a third look just to make sure I had it right. Inside the ripped open car was what, at first, appeared to me to be our rescue mannikin. It was bald, pale, and twisted in completely unnatural positions.

I initially thought, OK he made a mistake, it's a dummy. And then I looked again and realized that it was indeed a real person. The driver's head was pretty much facing the wrong way and was partially decapitated. Mannikins don't have actual anatomical structures visible on their inside, he did. I didn't have long to look and sort it out though, because he was obviously dead and my captain was calling for me to move the rig around into the drill ground to the other car.

I ran back to my rig and drove it around the station to the other wreck, pulled the hose line and charged it. Help had arrived by this time. The next due engine was on scene assessing our extrication and patient needs. What I saw when I arrived at the other car was what I was sure was going to be another dead body. I was wrong. He was unresponsive but breathing, though not well. The car was on its roof and the patient was in the backseat with his feet toward the door and his head hanging outside of the smashed rear window in a large pool of coagulating blood. The car had rolled, slid, and at the very least spun around one full revolution. I know this not because there were witnesses to tell us but because there was a blood trail on the pavement in the shape of the number nine leading around the car and right to our patients head. He had essentially done a parking lot 'donut' with his head out the window and dragging on the ground.

By the way, wear your seat belt.

Also, don't drive in excess of 80 miles per hour on city streets, don't race through red lights, don't run from the cops, don't commit vehicular homicide...the list goes on.

We quickly stabilized the vehicle and popped the door off with the Amkus tool.

I was pretty much a support person for this operation, getting the backboard ready, getting the trauma dressings ready, helping pull the patient out and onto the backboard. Once he was out, we put the trauma dressing over his large head wound, cut off all his clothes, secured him to the board, and sent him off to the trauma center with the waiting ambulance. His head wound was severe and while we were working on him he had decorticate posturing, which is a bad sign for the head injured patient. I seriously doubt he will survive and if he does it won't be as he was before.

As you can imagine, we were on scene for quite awhile after the patient was transported. We had a lot of clean up to do and the police had taped off the entire scene (including my rig) so they could do their investigation. The only saving grace was that we didn't have to extricate the deceased victim from his wreck. That would have to wait for the coroners investigation and fell to the unfortunate crew of Station 47 who were out at training and returned home to this mess.

We continued to run calls that shift, including another car accident in the same intersection, and ended our night with the 90-something year old code blue.

I think I've had my fill of death for a few shifts thank you very much.

No Pressure

We were getting ready to go out for our regular Monday rescue boat training when the Battalion Chief called. His daughters and grand-kids were visiting and he wanted to know if we would show them the boat and maybe take them for a ride around the Marina. We said, no problem, and arranged to meet at the marina.

We arrived at the marina first and got set to launch the boat. I would be training on piloting the boat, launching, and docking today. We decided to get going so we could launch, dock, and tie off the boat before the chief arrived. I've only tried docking the boat a couple of times, so it would be good practice.
Of course, the chief and his family arrived just as we were putting the boat in the water. This meant that I was going to have to dock the boat with the chief watching. Not only that, but I had to do it well enough for him to then turn around and put his grand-kids on the boat with me as the pilot. Luck was with me and the water was calm, there was no wind, and (as slowly as I could) I put it up to the dock easily. We then outfitted his family with life-jackets and I putted them around the marina for a few minutes while answering the grand-kids questions about the boat. I smoothly docked the boat again (thankfully) and safely returned the chief's family to him.

We then went out into the bay for our planned training exercises. Visibility was terrible (spare the air day with a lot of haze) but, so far, every day out on the water has been a good one.

Crash Into Me

I got mando'd on the first day of my four day. I could use the overtime and it was at my old station with a captain I like so it wasn't that bad, it's just that when you're ready to go home and are about to walk out the door you aren't in the mind-set of working for another 24 hours.

I packed up my gear and all my stuff and made it to the station by about 8:30 to relieve the engineer from the previous shift. I had not eaten breakfast yet, but I needed to check out the rig, especially since I hadn't been on this piece of equipment in awhile. I was the only medic that day, so I had to check all the medical gear as well. I finished all this in about 40 minutes when our EMS chief showed up followed by a semi truck delivering medical supplies to the station. We then had to unload the truck and organize all the medical equipment.

OK, with that job done it was finally time to go eat.

Just then the chief informed us that there was a structure fire a couple of districts over. We went to the rig and looked up the location on the map in case it went to a second alarm. Dispatch then rang our station down for move up to a neighboring district to cover for one of the engines that was at the fire. As we pulled out of the station we could already see the large, black column of smoke in the distance. Shortly after that, we got the dispatch for the second alarm and I hit the lights and siren.

It was a long run to get there and we could see the column go from black to white and start to diminish. And, just as we feared, the second alarm got cancelled when we were about two blocks away. Since we were practically there, we continued in and did a face to face with the IC (incident commander) to see what he wanted us to do. He wound up sending us back to the station we originally went to cover.

Now, I still haven't eaten at this point, so I knew I was going to be raiding their food when I got there. Unfortunately the station was not well stocked and all I was able to find were some Saltines and peanut butter.

We ran a couple of alarm calls while we were there but were cancelled on both. We didn't get released to return to our station until about 12:45.

The doors at this other station are on a timer so you don't have to close them when you leave, they close automatically after some set period of time. The crew from that house returned and after chatting with them for a few minutes we got set to get out of there. I started up the rig, and for some reason all the station doors closed. Now I'm just filling the ap bay with diesel exhaust, so my captain jumped out and hit the door open button and jumped back in the engine. I watched the door go up and checked to make sure it was all the way up and stopped before I headed out (as I always do). I had driven about 5-8 feet when I heard a huge crash. I stopped the rig and realized that the door had come down on us as I was leaving. The firefighter from the other engine had watched it all unfold and said that that is about the third time that has happened at that station and they still don't know why. He hit the button again and fortunately the door went up. I pulled the rig out the rest of the way and climbed up top to survey the damage. Surprisingly there was none, I couldn't even tell if the scratches on the aerial ladder were new since the whole ladder is pretty scratched up.

The station door on the other hand was wrecked. The bottom was bent out and the trim was ripped off and several rollers had gone flying off. it looked like a cross between these two photos (but possibly worse):




Luckily, we were able to manually release the door and pull it back down by hand using some very long pike poles.

We then returned to our station to begin the paperwork.