This would pretty much define it, 14 Killed in New York City Tour Bus Accident
A busload of passengers, many of them sleeping, rolls over and hits a pole of some sort that rips the roof off the bus. Fourteen dead outright, most of the remaining passengers injured to some degree or another. Add to that the fact that it was about 0530 on a Saturday and that the accident happened on the border of two different counties. As a result the response is going to be massive from both EMS systems involved. The only fortunate, if you can call it that, thing here is that one of the counties happened to be part of New York City so there were plenty of resources available.
Despite that the scene was no doubt chaotic. Or would appear so to the casual observer. My guess is that the responding agencies implemented their Incident Command System protocols and worked together to make sure that everyone who was treatable was treated and transported as quickly as possible. The potential problem at scenes like this is that the agencies will squabble over who is in charge of what and who should be giving the orders. Hopefully that didn’t happen here.
The goal at a scene like this is to sort out the chaos, triage the patients, treat life threatening emergencies, and transport the patients off the scene as quickly as possible. Which sounds a lot easier to do than it actually is to accomplish. As patients are prioritized by severity of injury and likelihood of survival, hospital destinations have to be determined because all of the patients can not be transported to the nearest hospital. Then of course someone has to track where the patients are going because it’s easy to quickly lose track of who went where and families, police, and others are going to want to know where everyone went.
Oh, and don’t forget to notify the medical examiners office, because they are going to be busy too.
And the media, although they won’t need to be notified, they will have a million questions, most of them redundant.
Don’t forget the scene security. This is now a crime scene and the police will want to establish and control a perimeter. Fourteen or more people die in a collision and someone, maybe several someones are going to be indicted.
As sick as it may sound, the scene also has to be secured from the “disaster tourists” and souvenir hunters. People are attracted to this sort of thing for some odd reason. Some of those people will be compelled to pick up whatever is lying around, including the odd piece of emergency equipment if you’re not careful.
As I said, pandemonium. Our job is to sort it all out. It’s what we do.
“Some of those people will be compelled to pick up whatever is lying around, including the odd piece of emergency equipment if you’re not careful.”
And sadly, there are quite a few people who will lie down at the wreck scene and pretend to be injured, in hopes of being part of any future settlement
Oh yeah, we used to call them the “Uh Oh” squad… We lost a @#&* Halligan tool at a multi-car multi-injury scene one night, along with an airbag. The three “Ts” are VERY important at a multi injury scene, and single point of command is essential!
I drove by a terrible bus accident a few years ago. It had happened within 15 minutes of when I passed and the rubberneckers had already slowed down the opposite direction lanes, on which I was traveling.
There were dozens of emergency vehicles traveling within sight and the only thing I really remember with any detail was the expression on a fireman’s face. The top of his body was reaching in a window on the bus, which was turned on his side. As I got closer, he pulled his way out, which is when I saw his reaction of horror and frustration. I don’t know what he saw, but I imagine it will be imprinted forever in his mind.