# Tornado disaster



## FDJohn (Nov 11, 2012)

On April 27th I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one on this forum out working. I was assigned to the county rescue doing an initial sweep on our designated grid square. We saw, and triaged several patients while making room for the ambulances to follow us into this nightmare that was our community only an hour ago. We came across a lot of walking wounded and marked several collapsed structures that the rescue team would shore and make entry to when they got there. (Yes we actually separate SEARCH and RESCUE here) My particular conflict came in a wave of threes. Communications were destroyed, we were all relying on a chain of handhelds to relay information back to incident command. The cell towers were destroyed and my wife and family could not be reached. That was problem one on my mind that day. Problem two came when we topped a hill and from a distance I could see that my neighborhood was no longer there. Problem three came when I was asked by a paramedic to ride with them to the hospital to keep pressure on a femoral bleed while they bagged the patient. I was being asked to ignore triage protocols. I was also being asked to abandon the rescue that was slowly making headway to my own decimated house. My captain said it was my call. I went in the ambulance and it was the hardest thing I had to do that day. Thoughts on this?


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## johnrsemt (Nov 24, 2012)

EMS and Fire have to make the rough call/decision and do the job.

Yes if they were bagging someone that blows out triage protocols,  but how many patients did you have?   Personnally if I was transporting that person I would have taken a green tag patient to hold pressure on the wound, (in a mass cal situation


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## FDJohn (Nov 24, 2012)

I personally had so far rounded up 4 green tags, 2 yellow tags and this guy made red tag number 2. My other red tag was impaled in the right upper quadrant and had to wait on
Heavy rescue.


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## Jon (Nov 24, 2012)

It all depends.

If the resources exist, then go for it. Did he survive?


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## FDJohn (Nov 26, 2012)

It was ironic that I found out, but yes he survived. My mother is one of the charge nurses at a critical care rehab hospital. I was visiting her for lunch one day and she told me about a patient she had who lost his wife in the storm not far from where I lived. He made his stay in rehab public to anyone who was curious so I stopped by to see who it was. There's my pt. laying in bed with casts and screws all over. It was actually really rewarding to see him alive and in good condition (despite the circumstances).


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## firecoins (Nov 26, 2012)

Seems to have the right call got to be flexible.


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## mycrofft (Nov 26, 2012)

Captain should have made the call and told the paramedic. Hope it worked out to your satisfaction n o matter which you did.


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