It’s the call firefighters dread

Sep 19 2008 by Jenny Wood, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A PERTH firefighter has spoken of the “spine chilling” moment when the emergency service staff hear they are being called to a car crash.

“It still sends a shiver down my spine knowing I am going to a road traffic collision,” Clive Kerr, a firefighter for over 15 years, revealed.

“It’s got to be one of the worst jobs we go to. We’re always pretty quiet heading out to those,” he said.

“We’ve been to so many, but mentally it never gets easier knowing we are going to a crash and people, all too often kids, have been hurt.

“With a fire it’s ongoing and we know there’s still a chance. It’s most likely to be smoke injuries we’re going to have to deal with.

“But with a car crash the damage has been done.

“A lot of the time what we turn out to is a scene of devastation, a road traffic collision can be pretty horrific,” Firefighter Kerr recalled.

“We get there and casualties can be in shock, there might be screaming and shouting and people can be pretty badly injured and really scared.

“Where do we start?

“But instantly the training kicks in and we really work as a team. Working together, working with paramedics and police, to do the best we can for everyone and get them out by the quickest, safest means,” he explained.

The rescuers remain focused until they have done all they can and only then do they get a chance to reflect on what they have faced.

“Once we’re finished at the scene we have a debrief, if there’s been a fatality it can be difficult to deal with.

“But we have to,” Green Watch’s Clive Kerr explained.

“We have to be physically and mentally ready for the next call.

“We could get called out in two minutes or five hours, so we have to be ready straight away to go all over again,” he said.

“Going to a road traffic collision really makes you stop and think.

“Sometimes I think if we could take someone out to a crash, to see what happens, it could make them drive a bit more safely,” the Perth-based firefighter added.

A small, but significant, change of emergency service terminology has summed up a shift in mindset when it come to road traffic collisions.

Dave Black, community safety co-ordinator for Tayside Fire and Rescue Service, explained: “We no longer refer to road traffic accidents as using the term accident implies simply bad luck was involved.

“The reality is someone is almost always to blame. Somewhere along the line someone has driven badly, which has resulted in the collision,” he said.

And sadly statistics reveal it is likely to be parents who are the ones left picking up the heartbreaking pieces of a road traffic collision.

“One in three new car drivers will write off a car in the first year after passing their test, a third of all rural road deaths and serious injuries are in cars driven by youngsters aged between 17 and 25 years old and,” Dave soberingly added, “young male drivers are now the biggest killer of young women in this country.”

“One road traffic collision is one too many,” he added.

Trapped, terrified and waiting to be rescued

THE split second after a crash is deadly silent.

It takes a moment for the enormity of what has just happened to sink in. While dazed victims take some time to take in their stricken state, emergency services have already swung into action.

Members of Green Watch at Perth’s Fire Station received word a young female driver was trapped in a two car smash and were on their way to the scene to rescue the victim.

The first firefighter at the crash tells the driver: “Sit still and look straight ahead, we’re going to get you out of there.”

Another rushes to the driver’s side to check her over for any injuries.

The crash hurt her back and the force of the impact knocked her head against the window.

The firefighter holds the driver’s head still. She’s dazed and scared, so he keeps her calm by talking and taking information about the accident and her injuries while colleagues set to work to stabilise the car and safely and swiftly free her from the wreckage.

With the driver trapped in her seat and suffering an injured back, the fire and rescue team bring in cutting gear and get the roof off the vehicle.

It is dramatic and drastic, but the only safe way to get the casualty out of the mangled metal mess of her car is to remove the vehicle from around her.

Keeping the trapped victim up to date about what was going on, firefighters used the ‘jaws of life’ to cut their way through the door of the boot.

“It’s going to get a bit noisy,” one firefighter told the trapped woman, “we’re going to get the roof off. You’ll hear a bit of a bang when it cuts through and then we’re nearly there.”

With incredible power the fire service’s tools sliced through the cold metal of the car.

And within just minutes of the emergency service arriving at the scene, the roof was lifted free from the vehicle.

Half a dozen firefighters gathered around the injured driver to carefully ease her from the car up onto a board to go to hospital to learn what damage the crash had done to her body.

But in this car smash, the casualty was incredibly lucky.

As dramatic and real as it had appeared, the operation had been a training exercise for Perth Fire and Rescue Service’s Green Watch and their ‘trapped driver’ was the PA’s Jenny Wood.

“It may have just been a practice run, but being trapped in the car and having to be cut out was still daunting,” Jenny revealed.

“That was probably one of the best driving lessons there is.

“The whole experience does shake you up and that’s without the pain and panic of a real smash thrown in,” she said.

“As friendly and professional as the team were, I really don’t want to be in the sort of situation where I am calling on their help for real.”