We were dispatched for a man injured in an excavation behind
the local junior high school. When we
arrived in the old Chevy Suburban ambulance, we found a male laying at the
bottom of about a six foot deep trench.
Part of the wall had come in on him and he complained of hip/pelvis
pain.
Not knowing any better, we jumped right in with him and started
to clear some of the dirt away by hand and with some shovels that the other
workers had. We were smart enough to
request fire department assistance, and the arriving engine company, no smarter
than us, helped with an attic ladder for access and more hand tools. It was like being an archeologist, as the
land where they were digging was an old landfill, and we were working on a
couple of layers of antique trash.
Once we had the dirt off him, the real fun started. We had to get him immobilized to lift from
the trench. We had nothing to work with
but the basics we carried on the ambulance; no stokes basket, and certainly no
modern strap system. We had a full
backboard and cravats. For the uninitiated,
i.e. younger than 45 years of age, cravats are folded triangular bandages. Part of the EMT curriculum at the time was to
be able to completely immobilize a victim to a long board so that when the
board was stood up vertically, the victim did not move using nothing more than
these big handkerchiefs. It was
something we practiced for hours at a time.
Now we had to do it for real.
As you can imagine, it’s not a speedy method, but we got to
work, square knot after square knot.
Finally done, it was the moment of truth. We stood the backboard up with the ladder
behind it to slide him up. He didn’t move
a bit. With the assistance of the engine
company, up the ladder he went and onto terra firma for transport.
Luckily nothing bad had happened—to any of us. The walls of this trench, made up of landfill
material, were far from stable, but we were protected in our ignorance. The
old days were not always better…
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