Building Collapse
In the wake of the nappy incident, I was feeling rather cynical when the news of the collapsed building in Victoria hit the control room.
“Building collapsed, debris everywhere, people ? trapped,” I read over a colleague’s shoulder (it wasn’t my sector). “Yeah, right. Bet a brick has fallen in the road or something. A bit of scaffolding at the most.”
After the twentieth call on the matter, I was being forced to eat my words. Fortunately Ambulance Control always treats every call as given, whether we believe it or not, and a plethora of ambulances, managers, HEMS, the HART team and the other emergency services were on scene straight away. Any nearby ambulance not on a job was ordered to go on standby at the nearby hospital. And yes, the building had definitely collapsed - or at least one floor of it had. Of course, initially we thought of bombs, especially as the building in question was very near to New Scotland Yard (police headquarters), Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. This theory seemed to be quickly discounted, though, or maybe everyone was just too busy getting people out of the building to worry about why it had collapsed.
All three services quickly declared a Major Incident, which meant that various people in Control put on ridiculous luminous yellow jackets and ran out into the special Major Incident Control Room. Fortunately, our watch recently did Major Incident Training (we got to clamber over all sorts of emergency vehicles, it was great) so we were well prepared. I wasn’t part of the major incident team so I can’t tell you what they got up to in the other room. I stayed in the normal room training Trainee 3 and dealing with the usual nonsense whilst keeping one ear pricked to see what was going on. One casualty was taken to hospital, but there were reports of up to 10 people being trapped. After a while, it was established that there was only one person trapped, so the major incident was stood down from an ambulance point of view (but not from a Fire Brigade or police point of view) and everyone took off the yellow coats and went back to what they were doing.
The man was rescued from the rubble with non-life threatening injuries long after I’d gone home. I read about that in the paper on the way to work the next morning too. The papers are sometimes the only way we get to find out the outcome of the calls we’ve dealt with!
on June 18th, 2007 at 10:26 am
They ran into the other room? You mean there’s no cool bat-cave style elevators or spinning control consoles?!
I’m disappointed now!
On a serious note, I couldn’t believe the news either when I first heard it.
Regards
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
on June 21st, 2007 at 2:37 pm
If its not a stupid question why did they need luminous jackets to go into the major incident control room ???? Is that a case of taking health and safety issues a little ‘too’ far ??
Glad the guy was ok though. Good work by all thise involved
( including those left running ‘ordinary’ zone whilst everyone else got to play with the big control room 
on August 20th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Hi Mark,
What should an ordinary person do if they stumble across a victim with multiple stab wounds in the back? If somebody has a single sucking chest wound then you put them on their side, with the wound on the bottom, and apply the ‘crisp packet’ bandage so that they can breathe but blood can drain out.
However, if they’ve got multiple stab wounds in the back I’m not sure what to do. When the paramedics got there they put him on his front, but that was presumably to treat and inspect the wounds…
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
on August 24th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Speaking as an “ordinary person” and not on behalf of the ambulance service in any way… what I would do would be to worry about stemming the bleeding whatever way I could (I think the ambulance would probably have turned up by the time I sorted out a ‘crisp packet bandage’ so I would just grab cloths or clothing and press) and leave the patient in whatever position he’d landed in, unless it was obstructing his airway or in danger.
on November 4th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Dan,
Get the patient into the recovery position with least injured lung uppermost, elevate the legs (within reason), apply pressure to the worst wounds, keep the patient talking if they’re conscious and keep the patient warm (jackets, blankets, whatever). Do NOT remove embedded objects. And pray.
If you’re somewhere remote from ambulance services, then it is possible to do more but you really need to do an advanced first aid course so I’m not going to provide details.
IMO if you live more than 10 minutes from help, you should do a basic first aid course. If you’re more than 20 minutes from help, do an advanced course with trainers who know your situation, the most likely scenarios you’ll deal with, and the worst case scenarios you’ll deal with.
My most likely scenarios are RTAs, agricultural accidents involving machinery and livestock, burns, chemical injuries and accidental shootings. My worst case scenarios are RTAs, agricultural machinery accidents, burns, chemical injuries, shootings and aircraft crashes (we’re under a heavily used helicopter/light aircraft flight path).