"Engine 2, pin-in response for a vehicle rollover. Northbound lanes of Interstate 1 at Highway 34. Following units to respond..."
Well, that puts the call in map grid A3. Which, if you're paying attention, is pretty close to FMH. Sigh.
I advise that we can handle the call, which lets a crew stay in their station, and we take off toward the freeway. As we approach the scene, I'm amazed at how much damage there is to the car. Picture this exit without the safety barrels:
Now picture a car sliding sideways into the point where the two guardrails meet. The car is center punched at the passenger door by the point, which flips the car and sends it roof first into a bridge abutment.
Based solely upon the wicked passenger space intrusion, I figure this'll be a bad one. Fire and SHP are nowhere in sight, and we're completely alone on scene.
My partner doesn't initially see the wreckage of the car, and nearly drives by the scene. We stop, he says a choice 4 letter word, and we get out of the rig. I approach the car and assess the damage. The roof has been smashed to the point that it's level with the doors, and the car is upside down. I bust some leftover shards of glass out of the rear window frame, get down on my belly, and look into the car.
To my surprise, a well dressed young woman waves and says she needs some help getting out of the car. She doesn't have a scratch on her.
Huh.
So I crawl through the broken glass and make patient contact. She states that she lost control and wrecked over an hour ago, but SHP had been unable to find her. She had an older non-GPS enabled cell phone, so it took some time to find her. She knew where she was within about a 5 mile stretch of road, but since she said she wasn't hurt and was out of the roadway SHP handled higher priority calls first. After waiting, trapped in the cold, dark car for almost 45 minutes, she finally called 911 again. They were finally able to get an approximate location based on how loud the sirens were, and that's when we were dispatched.
Aside from being a little bit cold, she has no complaints. Her short height (5 foot nothin'), her seatbelt use and the solid construction of her little Honda combined to keep her safe. The only reason she was still in the car was all the broken glass -- she didn't want to cut herself up. SHP shows up, and the Trooper grabs a blanket while my partner gets a board.
So my partner slides the backboard into the car, and I have her lay on the board and cover her up with the blanket. We slide her out of the car, I clear C-Spine (again, completely unhurt) and we have her sit in the back of the squad with the heater going to warm her up. The Trooper and I climb into the back of the squad and ask her a million questions about what happened.
This whole process took less than 5 minutes, so we're sitting back there when fire shows up.
The fire crew looks at the car and begins to unload all the extrication equipment. As one of the firefighters pulls the begins to set up his stuff (the Jaws), my partner approaches him. He waves my partner away impatiently. So my partner walks up to the lieutenant, who turns and looks at the ambulance. He shakes his head and laughs, and goes to tell his probie that we've got the patient extricated already.
We ended up transporting the young lady for an evaluation. While she had no injuries, she was very cold and had no quick way to get off the side of the road. The ER staff got the glass out of her hair, gave her some warm food and coffee, and called her dad came to pick her up. She was in and out of the ER in less than an hour.
All in all a very simple run, but it reinforces the old saying... "Try before you pry" -- the rookie firefighter never even assessed the situation before assuming that he'd need to use rescue tools. There are many times where doors are fully operational, and forcing entry or using rescue tools is completely unnecessary. This was one of them. The door edges were buried in the dirt, but accessing the patient was very easy with bunker gear on. He also completely blew off a seasoned coworker who tried to advise him that the patient was out of the car.
He's a good kid, though... He bought us Cold Stone on the next shift.
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