AWESOME video!! Reminds me of this car wreck.
I'm no medic, but I've sure been in enough situations to have to act with my limited medical training from my time in the Army.
Back in 1990, my wife and I came across a head on accident, one of the drivers was drunk as hell, between a Pontiac 6000 and a Yugo. The Yugo had five people in it. The driver survived, the front female passenger was DOA....crush wounds as well as sudden stoppage internal injuries, the back seat passenger had a piece of window frame stuck through his chest. His 5 y/o son right next to him was fine....not a scratch on him, and the other female in the back seat suffered crush wounds from the front seat. She was unconscious and since the car was burning, we yanked her and the kid out first. The driver was stumbling around outside the car with his large intestines ruptured from the steering wheel. We couldn't really pay attention to him....he was clear of the car and that's all that mattered with the fire. I then went over to the passenger in the back seat on the passenger side. I had to pull the car door out which allowed me access to the guy back there. I don't know how I managed to pull that door out. I couldn't get him out of the car with that piece of metal in his chest, so I pulled on it and it popped right out, but then signs of a sucking chest wound was evident. I finally got him out of the car and pulled about 20' behind it on the road. I yelled for one of the other people who had just pulled up to find me anything plastic.
A lady ran over with two towels, a FOR SALE sign with two big black clips on it and a roll of 100mph tape. She was a God send! I had a medium size artery, never did figure out where it went....it wasn't the heart, but perhaps one of the ones feeding that right lung of his that was punctured, that had a jagged radial slice in it and was visible past the sternum which had been pushed/fractured to the left side of the torso. All I had was one of those big paperclip things. The ones with the handles on it and a black, metal clip. I stuck it on there, pushed it into the chest a bit and then put that FOR SALE sign over his chest. I then unfolded one of the towels and put it over the sign, folded once in half. Then used the tape to attach it to his torso. There wasn't an exit wound per se in the back, but there was a nasty looking area of bulged out skin with severe bruising. I thank God that man wasn't awake! But his breathing immediately leveled out and became normal except for aspirating and puking some blood.
I got him stable, ran past a Major who was just standing there in shock staring at what I had been doing, then I got to the idiot at the other car who was trying to yank this 50+ y/o lady out of the front floor board. She hadn't been wearing a seat belt, she was too drunk to think of things like that, and when the drunk husband hit the Yugo, her fat ass somehow fit into the floor board area in front of her seat. The only thing in the car that was displaced was the glove box. But this azzhat was trying to yank her out and I stopped him. There were sirens I could hear by that point and so I went over to my wife and checked on the kid she had helped me get out of the Yugo. He was fine, but in shock. Then the paramedics pulled up with police and fire coming in within the next couple minutes. I grabbed one of the medics and told him where the most severe person was. It turned out later on that the driver was the most severely injured and he almost died due to his burst/crushed large intestines. He was given a colostomy bag to use for the rest of his life.....which turned out to not be very long. I detest drunks who drive. I don't drink, so I could smell the guy before I ever got to their car to stop the idiot yanking on the wife.
The male with the chest wound survived easily. He lost half a lung, but he was out of the hospital in seven days! He had a full torso cast too. My wife and I left the scene of the accident as soon as an MP took that little boy to an ambulance that had just arrived. When my wife and I got in our car to leave, there were seven or eight police/MP cars, three fire trucks and five ambulances. They used the Army Huey MedEvac as well. There was an article in the paper about three days after the accident describing the wounds and all. The drunk dudes wife had both legs fractured so badly they thought both would have to be amputated. Which they could do without anesthesia because her back was absolutely shattered and she had no feeling or movement below her breasts. The drunk dude was fine except for a steering wheel bruise on his chest. Their 13 year old daughter in the back of the car had seat belt burns/injuries but was otherwise fine.
The people in the Yugo asked in the article for the couple who helped them to come by and let them say thank you. So my wife and I went after quite a bit of talking about it. I didn't want to, but my wife said that since someone died in the front seat, they probably wanted to know some info since that body was burned pretty badly. So we went and spoke with them. I made sure they all knew that the female in the front seat was instantly killed upon impact and that she had no vitals at all when I checked her. This gave them some peace of mind since the body was so badly burned and they hadn't heard anything from the coroner yet.
We gave them false names and we were strictly against giving them our real names or address. They had more than enough evidence for the trial that was soon to follow. We did tell them that if they absolutely needed us, to mention it in the paper and we would show up to court at that time. But everyone respected our wishes and we were never notified for anything. About six weeks later, the driver committed suicide because he was in so much pain and the loss of his wife in the front seat.
He had somehow convinced himself that she was screaming and burning during the fire. She hadn't of course because she was dead. But he sure insisted that she was alive and burned to death. Even the coroner assured him that there wasn't any indications at all that she was alive when the fire got to her. Plus, the ME said that her wounds were so severe, nearly cutting her in half below the breast bone and crushing her heart. Not to mention the huge dent in her forehead from the windshield and dashboard.
Eventually, about two years later, the drunk driver was sentenced to life in prison.
It was said in one of the newspaper articles, I think it was the post paper, that the CG of Fort Ord wanted the Soldier who helped at the scene to come see him, that he had a Soldiers Medal waiting for him or her. My wife and I were very young then, and since this happened at 2230 or so, I wasn't in uniform.
I never did go see the CG. My wife and I were just happy we were there to help in that horrific situation. Plus, I had said a lot of choice words to the drunk driver and even kicked the crap out of him when he tried to talk to me. So I didn't know if I had kicked the crap out of an officer or what. As a two day old Specialist, I wasn't going to take that chance.
