Seconds after posting my last blog entry, my EMS pager went off. I proceded to visit two accident scenes.
The first was an accident on Red Mountain Pass in which the vehicle decended over 500 feet down an avalanche chute and landed in a river. The driver walked away with nothing worse than a (self professed) injured pride.
The second was at a construction site where a worker fell off a ladder (approximatly 1/35th the distance). Although I have not heard the hospital’s diagnosis, I suspect he probably broke his back and certainly cut and bruised up lots more of his body.
My question is this. How is it that one man can drive off a 500′ cliff into a river and walk away, but another has mud on his boots and slips off a ladder and sustains major injuries? For that matter, why did man #1 even live at all?
Unrelated to that thought, but on a similar topic; yesterday marked the first time I respneded to an emergency scene as a medic instead of as an ambulance driver. I did not need to do much more than help with the logistics of moving people around and holding cervical spine immobilization, but I still got to see a scene from a different perspective than I have been using for the past year.
