29 Jun Safety First
“Where is the engine?” As we were dispatched to a call on a local freeway at 2:00am, my dad’s words “nothing good happens after midnight” came to mind. As we approached the scene, I saw a mid-sized four door sedan straddling two lanes of traffic with a patient trapped. As I walked to the front of the car to see how much damage there was, I asked, “Where is the engine?” Where the motor should have been, there was nothing, nada, zip, it was literally gone! I looked around to see what the car had hit, nothing was there. “How did this happen?” I thought to myself. If the car would have hit the center divide the damage would look much different. Using the spreaders, (also known as the Jaws of Life) the other crew peeled back the door until it popped open. The patient was placed on a long backboard with a collar to protect the patient’s neck. Onto the gurney and into the ambulance for a code three ride to the closest trauma center. The patient was alive and relatively stable for the accident they were in. But that nagging question was still there…what did this car hit to make the motor vaporize? As we cleaned up the scene a CHP officer came by and told us what happened. “Apparently the patient was driving in excess of 100 mph when they struck the back of a large cement pumper (it’s a large truck with a boom that extends out to pump cement into tough locations- a big vehicle!). The driver of the pumper did not even know that he got hit! Yep, it’s that big and heavy. The engine had been crushed and obliterated into a thousands tiny pieces because the car had been traveling at such a high speed and stuck a huge truck.
Why do I tell you this? A seat belt saved that patient’s life, along with the airbags and the engineered crumple zones of the car. Without these safety devices the patient would have either flown out the front windshield or hit the inside of the car with so much force they would have been dead before we even got the 911 call. It’s amazing what I have seen over the years, cars that look like everyone inside should be dead, but because they were wearing their seat belts they walk away unharmed. Moral of the story..wear your seat belt! And be home before midnight, nothing good happens after midnight!
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