Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Another Busy Day For 1st Responders

Car with two occupants vs tree on Potwine Lane in South Amherst 

A very serious one car vs tree accident called in at 11:57 AM tied up almost all our first responders for over an hour as firefighters had to extricate the female passenger trapped in the vehicle before she was transported to Baystate Medical in Springfield, the closest hospital with a critical care unit.


Volvo was heading west into a curve at the time of the accident

The call came in at a busy time for AFD so the first ambulance (A3) dispatched had to make the longer trip from North Station rather than Central.  The crew from a second ambulance (A4), also from North Station, jumped into A3 at the scene, since the patient was so critical, and whisked her off to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield with a crew of four.

 AFD A3 leaving the scene

The third ambulance to the scene (A1) normally dispatched from Central Station had to come from Northampton after dropping off a patient at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.  A1, with a crew of three, then also transported the second, male, driver of the vehicle to Baystate Medical in Springfield. 

 Potwine Lane was closed

The injuries were so obviously serious that AFD originally requested LifeFlight helicopter out of Worcester which has a trauma surgeon and nurse aboard and could get to Springfield from the scene of the accident in 10 minutes. 

The Potwine Lane soccer fields right around the bend from where the accident occurred is a designated landing zone for LifeFlight.

Unfortunately the weather was too miserable for the bird to fly.

LifeFlight helicopter landed at Amherst College on Sunday for an all day training exercise

4 comments:

  1. Seeing as how this was (a) a Volvo and (b) you aren't headlining it "UMass Students Tie Up AFD", I'm guessing that these weren't UM students.

    Now what if AFD only had ONE ambulance? And ONE crew? As it would if the evil UM students weren't being needed to be hauled to the hospital with such frequency? Might the female passenger have had a somewhat less favorable outcome?

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  2. Actually we don't know if they are UMass students or not.

    DA just informed me they are both Amherst residents: the male driver age 22, and the female passenger age 26.

    Thankfully they are both still alive (I had my doubts about the female).

    If they are UMass students, that would not be worthy of a headline.

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  3. DA just informed me they are both Amherst residents:

    Fact the DA knows that speaks volumes -- as in the likelihood of criminal charges for, if nothing else, excessive speed.

    If ETOH is not a factor, will you NOW listen to my point that ETOH isn't the only thing that causes highway fatalities????

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  4. Larry Kelly probably doesn't even know what ETOH means, let alone be able to realize that it is not a substance that turns law abiding citizens into criminals when .07 reaches .08.

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