Used knife today at work

Medic1210

Medic1210

Joined
Sep 16, 2002
Messages
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If any of you follow NASCAR, you know that the Winston Cup race was in Rockingham, NC where I work as a Paramedic, this weekend. Usually when the race comes to town, I work on a bike team to provide rapid response around the track. Well, today, the wind was unusually rough for this area, with sustained winds of 15-20mph and gusts up to 50mph. Well, the US Army had scheduled to jump a few of their Special Forces skydiving team for a pre-race demo. Of course, things didn't go as planned. Eight guys dropped from a helicopter from approx 1000 feet, and as you might guess, with the wind as rough as it was, there were a few pretty rough landings. Basically, if any of you are familiar with skydiving, you know that you want to land into the wind. Well, these guys turn to face the wind, and it picks up and they start decending backwards, with no control of direction. They were too low to turn around again to try and choose another spot, so basically, they were just along for the ride. Needless to say, they weren't able to land where they planned, instead, the wind carried a few towards the infield where all the trailers and RVs are located. I'm in the infield as one guy comes in backwards right above me and to my left, and bounces off one trailer, and bangs his head on a box. When I get to him, he is in and out of consciousness, lying on his back. After protecting his airway, we set him up to be placed in full spinal precautions on a backboard. Here's where the knife comes in. He is still wearing his parachute container, which straps around his legs, chest and shoulders. Our "super" EMT scissors weren't really good at cutting those thick straps, so I pull out my 806D2 and proceed to cut his container off his back. We get him packaged, and loaded into the helicopter, which is always on standby at the races, and he is flown to Charlotte Medical Center. One of the other guys I helped treat, hit one truck trailer, and was then thrown off and hit another with his chest and head. He then fell off the trailer to the ground. He received a few bruised ribs and a few stitches above his eye for his troubles. Another guy broke an ankle, but I wasn't involved with his care. I don't know if any of this actually showed up on the TV or not, but just seconds after I got to the first guy, a camera crew was there trying to get a good shot for ratings I guess. Anyway if it did make it on TV, and you happened to see it, I was one of the Medics wearing a day-glow yellow jacket and bike helmet.

Oh well, just thought I'd share another story of how I use my knives at work.

Mike
 
We're lucky there's only a few RV's and no racetracks in Iraq... Otherwise, we would never win a war there!
 
I like NASCAR, and I love fly-overs and chute jumpers...but I would hate for one of these guys to ever get seriously hurt doing something so silly (your tax dollars at work).
 
I found a link to the story here. Actually, it isn't really accurate because it only lists 3 being injured, when in fact there were 4 injured. Also, here is a link to some pictures of the skydivers. You will need to paste it in your browser bar for it to work. javascript:openWin('/content/view?contentId=919540','contentlink',500,665) You can also see this link at the Fox Sports site, where I got it from. There is a link on the right side that says "Three NASCAR Skydivers released from Hospital" and a link right beside that that says "PHOTOS". There are 8 different photos. The first photo shows the one we airlifted to Charlotte as he is trying to land. Note that he is actually being blown backwards and hits the top of a trailer, falls off and hits his head on a box, which gave him a concussion. The second photo shows one of the skydivers that nearly got impaled on a fence, which you see right beside him. He ended up with a minor back injury and was transported to Womak Military hospital in Fayetteville, NC. He is the skydiver shown in photo 7 just before landing. The third photo shows the guy from the first photo, as we are taking him to the helicopter. I'm blocked in that picture, but you can see my partner for that day wearing the bicycle helmet and dayglo yellow jacket. The guy in the 4th photo is getting dragged down the track as an official tries to deflate his chute. I believe he broke an ankle and wrist. Not really sure if that is the one or not, as I wasn't involved in his treatment. Not sure if the guy in the 5th photo was injured or not. He might be the one that broke his ankle and wrist. The 6th photo just shows them as a group after jumping. The 7th is the one from the 2nd photo. You can see him almost landing on the fence. He actually came down on the other side, in between two car haulers. He was extremely lucky that he missed the fence.

Oh, well, just thought you guys might like to see some of the pics. I hate I was blocked out from that one. Oh well, such is life.

Mike
 
Good job! My skydiver incident was a couple of years ago. I was ground crewing a WW2 vintage C-45 which was hired to take up skydivers (could take 9 up at a time to 14k - field was at 4.5k!). One jumper landed wrong & busted his ankle/lower leg. Amongst all the club members/jumpers no one had a knife, so I whipped out my Spyderco Viele serrated for them to cut away the pant leg. A couple of weeks later we were back to take up more of them and six of them had picked up Spydies for their jump rigs!
 
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