Chaos

Got a call as soon as I walked in this morning. Obese black lady in her late forties having chest pain into her throat. She also felt nauseaous. Said she had an MI a few years ago that felt the same way. She was on no meds and didn't have a doctor. Skin warm and dry. Lungs clear. No pain increase on movement or breathing. Put her on the monitor. ST elevation in the inferior leads. Did a 12 Lead. Inferior with posterior involvement. Went on a priority to the hospital. Called in a cardiac alert. She ended up in the cath lab.

When we got back to the base we got a call from the PD asking if we could send a backup ambulance to a noncontigious suburban town (about 20 miles away) for a severe car accident. They won't let me go because we have a keep a medic in town. We had a EMT in the building and he called another EMT and they took off for the accident. A moment later we got a call in our town for a man with the shakes(probably from his vomiting and diarrhea.) When we got to the hospital there were already two patients in the trauma room from the wreck in the other town. I talked to one of the medics who brought one of the patients in and he said it was the worst wreck he had ever seen and he has been at it almost twenty years. He said a heavy dump truck carrying a load of earth lost its breaks coming down a hill and rolled several times as it plowed into a row of cars. He said there was a tour bus involved and cars on fire, and bodies in the road and bushes. There was one helicopter on the ground and another hovering overhead ready to land. He said the scene was complete chaos. Another medic said there was a bystander on scene doing CPR on someone who the bystander claimed now had pulses, even while he continued to do CPR.

When we were leaving the hospital we passed our BLS ambulance that was going lights and sirens to the hospital.

It was on the news when we got back. The scenes were horrific. An unknown number of people were incinerated in their cars. There were several dead and about twenty injuries altogether, many serious.

I talked to one of our EMTs when our ambulance returned. He said when he was there, a man was pulled out of one of the cars and was talking when suddenly he grabbed his chest and went down, and rescuers started CPR on him. The helicopters were both back at the scene on return trips. He said being there was like being in a war movie.

I guess a total of fifteen ambulances responded from all over the area. We are all waiting to hear the names of the victims, hoping we don't know any of them.

***

Later we did a lady with an episode of heart palpitations that had resolved before we got there.

After that things were quiet in our town.