01/12/19
 

Today was busy.

Our average is one or two runs a week. Yesterday there were seven. Six of them came in the space of two and a half hours. We have three trucks in my firehall and each one was out at a different call at the same time. All six of these calls were Motor Vehicle Accidents. At this time of year there is a phenomenon known as "black ice" A fog descends early in the morning and freezes on the roads. The roads turn into a skating rink that is hard to walk on much less drive on.

The first call was to a car in a water filled ditch, the second call came in while we were rolling to the first. It was a truck into a power pole, the third was about five minutes later and was a two vehicle MVA. The fourth and fifth were both over embankments and into ravines. The sixth was a rollover. For awhile there we were pretty wild and confused. As my grandfather would say "We didn't know whether to fight, climb a tree, wind our watch or steal third base" (I dunno if that makes any sense to you, but it's one of my favourite sayings:)

So there we were, running back and forth to MVA calls all morning. Out of six calls, and nine wrecked cars the worst injury was a dislocated shoulder. We're not often that lucky. There wasn't even a serious entrapment to deal with, just patient stabilization and scene safety.

The really nasty thing about this morning was getting the rigs to the calls. Remember the black ice? The firetrucks aren't immune. I'll tell you, it's a pretty anus-clenching experience to feel the Mack Pumper shift gears and have the back end slide around until she's heading sideways down a two-lane road. It's pretty tense to howl along with siren blaring and lights flashing and feel her slipping and sliding. She's a hell of a lot of truck, the ditches are deep, and the ice is pretty unforgiving.

Fortunately we managed to stay on the blacktop, and no one bent a truck.

The last call of the day was a sad one.

We were called to a mobile home where there had been a kitchen fire. Kitchen fires can be pretty bad things, many homes are lost from them, and many people are injured badly and killed by them.

The reason for this is simple, people aren't prepared or equipped to deal with them, even though they're the most common types of fires in the home. I can't remember the last time I saw a fire extinguisher hanging from the wall of anyone's home.

Do you have one? If not, why not? they're less than $30 at Wal-Mart, go get one and hang it in your kitchen.

But I digress.

We were called to this fire and found a house full of smoke, and an old woman lying outside by her front door. Her right hand was burned quite badly and all the signs were in place. Scorching above the stove, burned drips on the linoleum leading to the door. a big burned patch just inside the door. cooking oil everywhere.

It was clear without asking but I did anyway. She was making french fries in a pot of hot oil. The oil ignited and burned fiercely. Instead of using baking soda or covering the pot, or using the fire extinguisher that wasn't there, she grabbed the handle of the pot and carried it to the door to throw it out. As always, the handle was too hot  and she dropped it splashing the oil on her hand burning it badly. I've seen this happen a hundred times. I've never seen one that made it out the door. Either they go for the door or the sink. If they make it to the sink they turn on the tap and end up wearing the searing oil. It's horrible to see afterward.

She lay there and I looked at her closely, I let my crew cool the burn on her hand and begin treating it before the ambulance arrived. I was more interested in her overall condition. The burn could heal, but what other problems were hiding?

She was 80 years old
There was black soot in her nostrils and mouth, she had been breathing a lot of smoke, the smoke from cooking oil is particularly bad for you, there is a lot of soot and unburned oil in it, it's terrible for the lungs.

Her hair was all singed, she had obviously been exposed to a lot of heat all at once. She must have inhaled some of it, it's unavoidable. Thermal burns to the lungs are very common in these cases, and life-threatening to younger, stronger people.

I put an oxygen mask on her immediately to get as much O2 into her as possible, but there was obviously lung damage. In the 10 minutes or less that we waited for the ambulance, her breathing became progressively more laboured, her level of consciousness decreased, and she became confused. Her lungs were seared and beginning to fill with fluid.

The ambulance crew took my report in silence. The paramedic I gave the report to locked eyes with me and we just scooped her up in our arms and got her on the stretcher right away. The ambulance was rolling as we slammed the big doors at the back.

We took care of the rest of the incident and were just getting ready to leave when a car drove in. It was her daughter. She had heard that there had been a fire, she was distraught, she was also a nurse.

I went to her and told her what had happened, and what injuries I had seen and treated. She stood there, pale and drawn, she listened to me tell her about her mother's condition. She asked a few questions, and ended up standing there in the middle of the driveway staring at the mobile home and knowing her life would never be the same again. Her mother was likely going to die. Lung damage like that in a lady that old is rarely survived.

When I came back to the pumper, the crew were puting gear away and talking about what had gone on. They all asked me about her burn, but as I had been the one treating her it occurred to me that none of them knew about the lung damage.

I kept my mouth shut about it, why tell them? They all saw a bad burn on her hand and felt sorry for her. Everyone else went home with a fantasy in his mind about the little old lady getting bandaged up and going back to her nice little life and her nice little mobile home and baking cookies for her nice little grandkids or something.

Unfortunately her daughter and I knew different.
 

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