It was a mess, to put it mildly.  A nasty, gross, disgusting mess.

It was one of those accidents that tied up traffic for a good three/four/five hours.  An 18-wheeler and a van full of church kids were involved.

The truck driver, amazingly, emerged with very few scratches, bumps, and bruises; the occupants of the other vehicle weren't so fortunate.  Out of the 13 kids, 10 were hurt,five critically; the adults weren't in much better shape.  We knew we'd be on scene for a while when we saw the mass of devastation and suffering; it broke my heart.

Although it was over a week and a half since it occurred, the memories will haunt me for a long time to come.

We were at the fire station, "we" being myself, "Goose" Guzman, Patricia E. Moss, and Henry Ochida, one of the "new kids on the block"; he just joined our squad right before this situation took place.  We were looking forward to a day of relaxation, but it was not to be.

Accidents happen.  They don't take days off.

The tones sounded, and it was down to business.  They repeated several times; we knew it would be bad.  We knew we had to get on the scene as quickly as possible if lives were to be saved.

We grabbed our gear, threw them into the rig, which is fully loaded with the latest in life-saving equipment, and raced to the scene as fast as we could.  We got there within minutes.

I mean, we flew to the scene.

We tended to the injuered.  The truck driver, five kids, and two adults, we thought would be okay; the others, we weren't so sure. 

One lady was unconscious and not responding to pain or stimuli; a  little girl was in a coma (she wasn't responding, either), and a teenaged boy's arm was hanging by a thread of skin.  He was howling in pain. 

A little boy had been impaled; a metal rod was sticking out of his stomach.  He was unconscious and in shock.  Two more girls, teenagers, were bleeding profusely from numerous gaping wounds; they were going into shock, too. 

Another man broke his neck; he was saying he couldn't feel anything below his collarbone.  He was hysterical.  We got him bricked and loaded into the ambulance; we soon had the other badly injured people in other ambulances that had responded and were soon on their way to the hospital.


If any of them were to survive, it would be a miracle.  It was out of our hands; it was up to the medical staff at the hospitals they were taken to, and God, of course.

After the last of the patients had been transported to the different hospitals, my partners and I stayed on the scene, trying to get details from the witnesses who'd seen the accident happen and cleaned up the rig, and then went back to the station. 

Those injured were on our minds, so we made the rounds to the hospitals, to see how the patients were faring.

Turns out the two teenaged girls who were bleeding, as well as the little boy with the traumatic amputaion, perished before reaching the ER.

The others would survive, but some will face lengthy hospital stays.
 
All I can do now is pray for them and their families, pray they came through their injuries without any lasting disability.

Scenes such as this one have a way of lingering in your mind months or even years after they occur.  We try our best to put it behind us, but sometimes, it's nearly impossible.

I've been on numerous bad calls; months, years later, some stick out and haunt me.  This will probably be one of them...the sight of all the blood, the cries of the injured still awaken me from sleep. 

There is nothing like seeing life-threatening injuries to put your priorities straight.  When young people are involved, it just makes the situation all the more dire. All you can do is treat them as best as you can and pray that God intervenes somehow and turns things around.  There is nothing much more that can be done; this is when being a paramedic can be trying because we see so much in the way of death, destruction, and suffering.

Sometimes scenes like the accident described above can make (or break) a person.  I have known far too many EMTS or paramedics who have hung up their black bags and stethescopes because they coulnd't handle the suffering; others I have seen work above and beyond the call of duty.

Being a paramedic isn't for everyone, but in my case, saving lives is what I enjoy doing, and if my help allows a person to survive, it's worth it.

Definitely worth the training, the tears and the nightmares.

Written by Wendell P. Gilmarten, NR-EMT-Paramedic, Nashville, Tennessee.