Gravity Lessons

I was working overtime at a station on the other side of my department. One of the things we covered in that district was an off road park. While not a lot of calls are generated there when they do come in they're usually fairly serious.

Around lunch time we heard the radio from the State Park Rangers crackle (we monitored it to get a head start on calls). We heard a Ranger say that they had a person over the side and to dispatch Fire. As we were leaving the station we could hear the tones going off. Not a bad response time.

As we arrived at the park we were met by another ranger in a 4x4 pick up. He led us to the correct trail and then told us it was way at the back of the park. He wasn't kidding. 25 minutes later and we still had yet to reach our patient. Narrow dirt roads, steep hills, and other riders all slowed us down.

As we neared the scene we could see where our patients path diverged from the trail. We saw a knot of people we down below. A couple minutes later we were dismounting from the rig next to the mountainside. 

Our patient, a 25 year old woman, had accidentally left the trail and went down the side. She was able to ride about 50 feet down a near vertical cliff before going over her handlebars. She came to rest 40 feet later just short of the 30 foot sheer cliff that surely would have changed the nature of this call.

As it was the patient had a flail chest on her right side, a broken shoulder blade and a possible spine injury. What the woman had going for her was that there was no neurological damage that we could tell, she didn't have a pneumothorax, and her vitals were stable. She was in a lot of pain however.

On the side of the hill I started an IV and administered some morphine. It wasn't enough to take the pain away but it did take the edge off. Once that was set we placed her on a backboard, strapped her in and then placed her in a stokes basket. With the help of a couple of other riders we were able to get our patient down the hill.

Once there we loaded her in the back of the waiting pickup that the Rangers brought up initially. I hopped into the back with her. After making her as comfortable as possible we started the long bouncy drive down the the waiting air ambulance (and you thought the days of riding in the bed of pickup trucks was a thing of the past).

As we approached the helicopter the truck stopped. The RN jumped into the back and I gave her a quick report. She asked the patient a few questions and attached a few cables to the patient. We then pulled up closer the the chopper and stopped. 

The whine of the turbine and the whir of the blades made communication a little more difficult. As a team we transferred the patient from the stokes basket to the helicopters loading board. We then strapped her in tight and carried her to the waiting bird. 

Once she was loaded we retreated to a safe distance. 3 minutes later the engine revved up and the pitch of the rotor blades changed. We all turned our backed to keep our faces from getting sand blasted from the down wash. And with the familiar thump thump thump of the helicopter the patient was off to the trauma center.

What Goes Down Must Go Up?

It had been a quiet shift. We decided to head over to the off road park to check things out. They were having a 3 day professional event which is fun to watch and usually good for providing a few calls. They always have a private paramedic ambulance on standby but anything serious or requiring manpower and we get a call. I told my engineer that every time we go over for a tour we end up getting a call there. It's almost as if the riders know we are close so they try some of the riskier moves, and fail.

We started down on the West side and worked our way East, stopping to people watch and to chat to the rangers. While traveling down the dirt road a dirt bike came at us in a hurry. A young man pulled up and said that a young girl had gone into the stream up one of the canyons. We flipped on the lights, notified the rangers and dispatch and headed that way. We also requested a helicopter figuring it's better to have it on its way and not need it than vice versa.

When we arrived at the accident we found a 11 year old girl laying on the trail. Her dirt bike was at the bottom of a 10 foot deep ravine. One of the "helpful" bystanders and decided to pull her up to the trail and take off her helmet. One of the rangers immediately grabbed c-spine for me. I can't say enough positive things about those rangers. They make my job easy.

A witness said that she had accidentally left her bike in neutral when she started down the hill. She accelerated to a speed which made it impossible for her to make the curve sending her into the stream below.

As I started my exam I noticed that she had a laceration above her right eye. The bleeding was relatively minor so I wasn't too concerned. The young lady kept complaining about her right foot. After my physical exam and noting that there were no other apparent injuries other than her cut and her foot my captain asked if I still wanted the helo. As I was about to say no I noticed that my patient started asking the same questions again, indicating a possible brain injury. I decided to fly her.

While some of the guys finished strapping her to a backboard others splinted her leg. I started an IV and then administered some morphine. I was working with an overtime captain and he was impressed that I even considered pain medication. I ended up giving the little girl as much as I could and it took the edge off of the pain from a possible fractured foot. Once all this was done we loaded her into the stokes basked on the back of the rangers 6 wheel ATV and headed down the hill. Part of our crew had already headed that way to set up an LZ.

Just as we got the the landing zone the helicopter appeared over head. Once I made sure the patient was safe from the rotor wash I snapped a quick video.

Once Calstar was on the ground we met up with the crew. I gave a report to the flight nurse who did a quick second check of the patient. We then loaded the girl onto the waiting helicopter, the engine never having shut down. Her father was going to get the ride of his life in the front seat.

After clearing the bird I took another video of them lifting off. In ten minutes she would be at Children's Hospital, instead of the hour it would have taken by ground ambulance.