A tough call
Usually I find the fire service to be rewarding and while we often are involved in tragedies we reduce their impact on others or at least provide some comfort and aid. This morning that didn’t happen. Just before 1 AM we got a call for a roll-over accident with possible entrapment. As I’m a good distance from the scene it took me about 15 minutes to get to the call.
When I arrived I found the situation as reported except there was not victim. The driver had not stayed at the scene and at that time we had no indication of a second person being involved. Still we did a search of both sides of the road as a precaution even going so far as to use our FLIR camera (most times used to search a building in heavy smoke conditions). While it clearly showed others in the woods doing the search there was no indication of a victim. We were secured from the scene somewhere after 3 AM and I returned home.
At 5:30 AM we got called out to search for a victim again. Due to my schedule I couldn’t respond to this call but they found the body about 100 foot up the road from where we had searched. I know we did everything we could with the information we had at the time but it still hurts to think if we had gone a bit further up the road we might have found him and been able to save him.
Not the first time I’ve experienced an incident like this and I’m sure not the last. Still just to say something about it helps.
When I arrived I found the situation as reported except there was not victim. The driver had not stayed at the scene and at that time we had no indication of a second person being involved. Still we did a search of both sides of the road as a precaution even going so far as to use our FLIR camera (most times used to search a building in heavy smoke conditions). While it clearly showed others in the woods doing the search there was no indication of a victim. We were secured from the scene somewhere after 3 AM and I returned home.
At 5:30 AM we got called out to search for a victim again. Due to my schedule I couldn’t respond to this call but they found the body about 100 foot up the road from where we had searched. I know we did everything we could with the information we had at the time but it still hurts to think if we had gone a bit further up the road we might have found him and been able to save him.
Not the first time I’ve experienced an incident like this and I’m sure not the last. Still just to say something about it helps.