Big Car Wreck

The day was moving along swimmingly. I was getting progress made towards some of my DU bugs. I actually made a lot of headway. I am close to figuring out some fixes. While working away I hear Pullman getting dispatched for a three-car head-on accident. Just north of the North Pullman Bypass on SR One-Ninety-Five.

I got to the station and called in standing by with one. After a couple minutes no one showed up. I called Erik on the phone. He asked what was up. I told him a three-car head-on accident. He said “I’m on my way.”

We got to the scene and there were cars everywhere. At first I was thinking that there were going to be some very severe injuries, but as it turned out it looked worse than it was. I started by talking to someone who was in one vehicle. After finding the person did not want to go to the hospital I went onto the next task. I was mainly helping to get equipment when the one person I talked to wanted to go the hospital. So I worked with Brian to get that person packaged and ready to go to the hospital.

Erik had already been committed to a patient and was going into the hospital. That is when it was decided that Rescue would be used for extrication. Tim got in to drive it and I jumped in the passenger side. We got it to where it needed to be for cutting. we got the tools set up. We had the cutters and spreaders. I needed to cut the bottom of the B-post on the driver’s side of the car. If we had had the combitool on Rescue it would have been nearly impossible. But we had the big tools. I made a big cut.

Then I used the spreaders to make more room for a second cut. I made the second cut and that is what was needed to get the side of the car removed to get the patient out of the car. It went pretty quick once it was decided to cut the car.

After that patient was loaded I got the Rescue turned around and went to the hospital. I worked on getting it all back in service and down to The Deuce for the drive time with one of the new guys. I was pretty discouraged to see that he had passed a couple of the map tests but could not get me to any road I was throwing out at him. He never has really been to that part of the city so I can understand some problems, but it is clear the map test alone is not enough to show someone knows the streets of Pullman.

When the drive time was done Tyson, the new guy, and I got the Rescue fueled up and back in service for Michael’s shift.