JimK wrote: My point is the ambos can not tell anyone to commence rescue.... they can ask.
This is correct; Ambulance Officers can not direct anyone to commence rescue, but if a Ambulance Officer or the Senior Police Officer in attendance at a person trapped incident ask a NSWFB Officer or the Firefighter In-Charge of an appliance crew to commence the rescue process, then under the Fire Brigade Act the NSWFB Crew are obliged to commence the rescue process to the best of their ability.
JimK wrote:
There was an MVA on Castlereagh Road at Agnes Banks near the Driftway a couple of years ago. SES were responded but 82 Richmond turned up first. The bloke in the car was impaled, very complex rescue.
P82 admitted they could do nothing and were glad that SES turned up. Ambos stabilized the patient. This was from the SES Controller.
Yea OK, an impaled vehicle occupant may be a difficult extraction, especially if the impaled object is a Steel Guard Rail
solution – power saw
The difficult task is separating a small portion of the impaled object (the part impaled in the person) from its source Under the guidance of the senior medical officer in a manner that does not inflict any more undue trauma on the casualty.
Now I don’t believe that 82’s Crew could not do anything to assist the impaled occupant, especially considering most of the Senior Members of 82 Station have been trained to Primary Rescue Level in the past, well up till when 82 Station was issued a Isuzu Type 2 Pump a couple of years ago (before the Scania Pump), their International 1800Acco Pump carried a full Primary Rescue Kit on it for a number of years.
So really I find it very surprising that 82 crew could not do anything for the impaled occupant, after all rescue is not rocket science. Even I know most of these impaled objects are usually separated from their sources by simple hand tools carried on all appliances . . . . . even RFS tanker, such as hacksaws, pruning saws and wood handsaws etc.
Now I am a non rescue qualified firefighter, who’s last official rescue training occurred while I was a recruit firefighter at the collage in 1997 (non-official rescue training 18 months ago in 63’s back yard), and I believe I have some knowledge and skills to have ago at extracting a casualty impaled by an object with the equipment carried on a standard urban pump if such an incident accrued.
To me, I think 82’s Crew were probably like majority of us nun primary rescue members and thought why bother getting the gear of the pump and getting to work, as majority of the time the Primary Rescue Unit usually arrives at the incident before we get all our gear off the pump and setup, so why bother getting the gear off the pump anyway
