The Value of a Seatbelt

The shift yesterday was somewhat dull, until about 2030 or so. Call came out in my territory for a MVC with injuries and entrapment. We made it onscene within a couple minutes and blocked all traffic (well, PD tried, but you can't get past a fire engine). It looked bad...There was a thick trail of blood coming from what looked like under the car. I was told to go help a rescue captain check the 2 people that were ejected from the vehicle. One was already covered with a sheet. The other was split open from about the middle of his chest to his underarm, he'd had some type of surgery recently and his stitches had burst open.

"No pulse, no respirations, pupils fixed and dialated...Cover him with the sheet."

**focus on the now** I went over to help with the other 4 patients that were in the SUV. All were relatively unscathed, they were also wearing their seatbelts. The worst (visible) injury was a couple scrapes and what looked like road rash. Each patient was immobilized using a standing takedown (yes, C-spine was maintained first with a collar) and transported to a trauma center.

These kids may not have needed to go, but due to what we call mechanism of injury or MOI, they were going. Any accident will qualify for MOI is it hits any one of multiple criteria: death in the same passenger compartment or intrusion greater than 2 feet, falls of 3x's the patient height, and the list goes on.

Having responded to an MVC with entrapment before, I came off the engine with my turnouts and helmet on. With all the patients safely enroute to the ER, we decided to try and cut the battery cables to make the SUV 'safe'. It took a while. The way the car rolled, the hood was tucked under the side quarterpanels. Since I had my gear on already, I got to start tearing apart the hood. Somebody handed me the Haligan Bar and I started swinging. We fought that stinking hood for probably 10 minutes before getting smart and grabbing the K12 saw. Let's just say it made short work of the fiberglass hood.

As crime scene, medical examiner and the traffic investigator arrived, so did the news media. We had raised the light tower on the engine to illuminate the scene but turned the lights off to try and minimize rubberneckers on the other side of the road.

It was a while before CSU and the traffic investigator were through taking pictures and marking the pavement. Once they finished, the ME came in and loaded the 2 bodies. The poor kid that was previously covered with a sheet looked like his neck was broken, and he'd bled out. The other looked bad as well, but hardly had any external bleeding.

The tow truck driver did some cleaning up and moved the SUV to level ground to try and load it. Meanwhile, I grabbed the booster line off the engine and tried to wash away the blood.

Here's the news article from one of the TV stations that came out, the pictures of the SUV don't show much damage...Most of the damage was on the passenger side of the car, I guess the cameras had to stay on the driver's side of the car so the bodies of the victims wouldn't be shown.

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=56908

We finally made it back to our station shortly after midnight.