here is another --what would you do

2 door BMW 5 feet off the pavement on it's side hung up in a tree. The car is on a 60 deg slope and it's very slippery from loose soil, pine needles (6-8" deep) and moisture. The trees are 1 or 2 live ones the rest dead. The car snapped off a 16" dia dead tree and is resting on the trunk and a 14" dia live tree (trunk shown in pic #3 after the car was rolled over) . it is approximately 10 feet down a 40 foot slope. Front seat passenger is trapped and has a broken leg and rear seat passenger has a foot that is pinched between passenger side door and seat and a previous broken ankle . The bottom of the car as it sits (right hand side ) is 4 ft off the sloping ground at the front passenger , 5 ft at rear.

I am very interested in what folks would do. We had res-q-jacks, cutter, spreaders, air bags, truck mount winches,ropes and general rescue tools at our disposal. Wrecker was called but took 75 minutes to get on scene -- and it was a flatbed !

definitely appreciate hearing any ideas.

0 members like this

Attachments:

karr 1.JPG, 1.1 MB
karr 2.JPG, 1.2 MB
karr 3.jpg, 1.2 MB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Edwin Gardner on March 4, 2011 at 9:04am

well u see there really is not any good way to get the patients out but by rolling and lowering the car back on its wheels carefully then making a better judgement thats just my opinion.

Permalink Reply by Arthur S Collatz on March 7, 2011 at 12:11pm

WOW... we would never move a vehicle like that with patients in vehicle! (doesnt mean our way is right or yours is wrong)
Cribbing, stabilizers, winch and ropes.
then I would access vehicle by cutting floor, using milwaukee metal cutting saw and sawzall.
practiced this more than once.

take a class by todd hoffman, sceneoftheaccident.org you will learn what works and what doesnt and learn to think outside of basic extrication classes.

Permalink Reply by Asst Chief Tim Cook on March 7, 2011 at 8:38pm

Read ALL the responses. Look at ALL the possibilities. Then make an EDUCATED decision.Cutting vehicles FLOORS is very time comsuming difficult work. In THIS case there are better ways.Be sure to read the OP's patient assessment as well. As I did before commenting.

Permalink Reply by Arthur S Collatz on March 8, 2011 at 10:28am

I did read and I did make an educated decision. Going thru the floor is not time consuming provided you have the right tools and training. I can be thru the floor in under 5 minutes. This is a senario that there is no correct answer to, everyone is trained to different levels and all have different experiences. What you feel comfortable doing, I may not and vice versa. Its good to get other ideas / opinions, but at a call you have to fall back on your experience and training and do the best with what you have. We can all armchair quarter back. We need to have a debrief after calls to see what we learned, what went right and what went wrong. But we can not second quess or decisions because that will just make us that much more ineffective at the next call. I hope I do not sound condescending like some others, insinuating that people didnt READ, or make an EDUCATED decision, just because I have a different opinion.

Permalink Reply by Asst Chief Tim Cook on March 14, 2011 at 9:53pm

Agreed. For US,the floor is one of the LAST options. For a whole lot of reasons. Done it,successfully, but NOT on the TOP of MY list, And this vehicle in MY experience isn't very floor friendly. YOUR mileage may vary.

Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on March 20, 2011 at 6:53pm

Going through the floor is rarely a good idea, simply because it is generally a blind technique. If you do a floor cut-in, you're gambling that your cut-in won't further injure the patient.

In the photos shown, a floor cut-in was obviously not necessary.

Floor cut-ins should be restricted to a "last resort" extrication technique in virtually any circumstance.

Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on March 20, 2011 at 6:55pm

There's no need to move this vehicle with a patient trapped in it.

Those moves create a very high risk of further injury to the patient.

Remember that you do the pre-extrication roll, you're not just moving an unstabilized vehicle, you're also moving an un-stabilized patient.

Permalink Reply by Asst Chief Tim Cook on March 26, 2011 at 9:38am

Did we just agree on something Ben?

Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on April 3, 2011 at 3:04pm

I've held that opinion since 1975. I learned it from Harvey Grant when he was touring the Mid-Atlantic in support of Vehicle Rescue, 1st Edition.

I've never found a floor cut-in that wasn't more lengthy and dangerous to the patient than another option. I've never had to resort to a floor cut-in. Truck tunneling, digging out a roadside ditch side wall, lifting heavier vehicles off the car underride - yes. Floor cut-ins, no, even though I've dona a lot of training on them and know where and how to cut.