Happy Windsday!

It was a very blustery day....

The day started off nice and sunny and we decided it would be a good day to get our new captain some practice at launching and recovering the rescue boat from the trailer (which he hadn't done yet). We were all set to go after lunch. However, all through the morning the wind continued to pick up and by the time we got to the marina there were waves and little white caps at the boat launch which is pretty unheard of. We, stupidly, decided to give it a try anyway. Based on the conditions I offered to try it out first to see how tough the recovery was going to be but the captain decided to give it a shot.  We figured if you can succeed in the worst conditions then all other attempts will be a piece of cake, right?

As soon as he backed the boat off the trailer the wind started pushing us back into the dock and towards the rocks. My captain struggled to get us straightened out and turned around for a run at the trailer. We were in a substantial crosswind and the cabin of our boat basically turns the middle and ass-end of the boat into a giant sail. 

The wind was coming from our left and as we made the approach to the trailer things were actually looking good. Then things started to go sideways...literally. The wind was pushing us sideways past the trailer and towards the starboard side dock. We have bumpers out to protect the boat and the firefighter at the trailer ran over to push the bow of the boat away while I leaned out and pushed against the dock from inside the boat. The firefighter suggested that we reposition the trailer and just pull the boat onto it by hand, a simple and practical solution. However, being a firefighter faced with a challenge and slipping into single-minded, "this thing isn't going to beat me" mode I said I wanted to give it one shot before we resorted to towing it in. I figured the worst that would happen is that we wind up in the same spot and go with the firefighters plan.

I backed the boat up and fought the wind to loop around for my run at the trailer. Now, normally in recovering the boat I only use one motor and only power it up to make steering adjustments with small on/off bursts. The expression we use is, "Slow is pro". This day, I found myself using both motors just to get lined up into position. I aimed for the corner of the port side dock to hopefully give myself some wiggle room and came in under power, though with only one motor. The rear of the boat immediately started swinging out to the right as I approached. I wound up coming in almost completely sideways to the trailer and under power, scary. Just before I got to the trailer I turned the bow hard right toward the trailer and killed the power. I got a thumbs up from the firefighter at the trailer and as the boat came up on the rollers and centered itself I popped it back into gear and drove up onto the trailer. The firefighter secured the bow hooks and  brought us out of the water. It was probably a one in a thousand lucky shot and I doubt I could possibly repeat it, but damn it felt good. That recovery alone made me happy all day.

We weren't the only ones battling the wind that day, though.

Our next call, after giving up on further boat ops and getting back to the station, was for a woman in the trailer park whose carport was being ripped apart by the wind and threatening to fly away. When we arrived we saw that two of the supports had already been pulled loose and the roof itself had buckled. The entire carport was about 40 feet long and made of corrugated metal.

My firefighter grabbed a pike pole and hooked it over the roof where it had buckled and pulled down to bring the roof back down to the sheared supports. He wrapped his legs around the pole like he was flying on a broomstick and even with that when a gust came along he was lifted off the ground about six inches. I threw a ladder for the captain and handed him tools while he tried to reattach the supports with some metal strapping. We soon discovered that the strapping was not going to hold and decided to try securing the whole thing with rope.  I found myself lying on my back on top of a shed under the carport with a sawzall cutting holes in the metal as the roof blew up away from me and bounced back down within a foot of my face. We fed ropes through the holes I had cut and tied them off to secure anchors on the ground. Of course the next gust that came along caused the rope to rip through the corrugated metal like butter.

Okay, that did it, this thing had to come down. We decided just to cut the damaged section of roof off entirely, a section about twenty feet long. I took over duty on the pike pole trying to keep the roof pinned down while my firefighter sat on the roof of the mobile home with the sawzall cutting the carport away from the home. The sheets of corrugated metal were pulling loose from the gutter/flashing I had hooked with the pike pole so every once in awhile when the firefighter cut a sheet loose it would whip back at him like he was holding onto an airplane wing. It's amazing none of us got hurt. But, it worked. We even went back the next day to check on it and make sure everything was okay and all was in order.

We rounded out the shift with an overdose, a combative woman with encephalopathy, and a DOA early the next morning.

Priorities

My last post mentioned priorities and how often, at least in our eyes as first responders, they can be quite skewed. Here's a good example:

We responded for a 55 year old male who was bleeding from a recent surgery site. When we arrived we were met outside by someone who told us the patient had undergone hernia surgery that same morning and must have popped a stitch getting in and out of the car when they went to run errands. We went inside and found that our patient was sitting in his kitchen typing on a laptop computer with no bleeding control measures in place at all. His jeans were saturated with blood from his waist to his knees.

 I wish I had taken the time to look at the screen to see what was so important that kept him sitting up, typing, and bleeding (maybe he was blogging about his experience). I asked him what was going on and the first thing he tells me is that he is feeling lightheaded and nauseous. Really? I can't imagine why. I told him to lay down immediately. His blood pressure laying down was 87 over 50.

I went to kneel down next to him and almost knelt right in a puddle of blood. I grabbed a nearby towel and laid it over the blood. His pants were undone and I lifted his shirt to see a completely clean surgical incision site. Weird. I told him I needed to remove his pants to examine the wound. He said okay but asked that I cover him with something, modesty I guess, but again - priorities, after all we were alone in his living room not in the mall. Turns out he was going commando but I barely had to move his pants down to see that the lower abdominal incision site was the one that was bleeding. I covered it with a trauma dressing and applied some pressure. I asked how long ago this happened and he said, "About an hour." An hour?!?! What have you been doing for the past hour? "Well, we just came back home from the store." A word of advice here, if you have surgery in the morning, don't go shopping in the afternoon. If you pop a stitch at the store and are soaking your jeans with blood, stay there and call an ambulance.

Next, I asked if he had any medical problems and he said he was diabetic. I asked if he took insulin or pills. He responded, "Oh god I take so many pills it's like a meal." Oh, okay, what for? "I'm HIV+." Oh. Now, I can understand not wanting to shout out to everyone who comes into your house your HIV status, but when you are covered in blood and the medical personnel ask if you have any medical problems, it might be the first one you mention. In fact, you might want to mention it in the very beginning. Of course we always wear gloves and take precautions against body fluid contact but it is still one of those things that makes you a little nervous and you like to know about as early as possible.

An I.V., some fluids, and an ambulance ride back to the hospital and this patient would be fine. I just really wish I knew what he was doing on that computer that was so important.