First-Hand Account
Submitted by Firefighter Shaffer, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue
 
  Today while riding Engine 10 in the Naked City of Las Vegas, we ran an interesting call. The Rescue was dispatched to the Fountainebleau construction site for an industrial accident. Based on the notes of the call, we backed them up. The notes indicated that the pt had either a leg injury or an arm injury. Upon arrival, we discovered that he had both.
We took the manlift to the 18th floor (an E-ticket ride if you have never been in one of those) and had to make our way to the opposite side of that floor (of course). On the 18th floor, it was a typical high rise construction site. No walls or anything and just a thin piece of wire running along the edge to make sure you didn’t fall to your death 15 feet below. When we got to the pt we found a 23 year old male who had just had an approx. 24″ pipe about 8 to 10 feet in length fall on him.
Now the details are sketchy on exactly what happened, but the short and skinny
of it is that he had his Right hand amputated at the wrist and an open tib/fib fracture to his Right leg as well. The other construction workers had fabricated a tourniquet with a belt to control the bleeding and his hand was still in the glove (it was hanging on by just a flap of
skin). He also had the open tib/fib (which he said hurt more). So what did we do for him? Well, we weren’t going to do any good up on the 18th floor, so this was a quick load and go. We kept the hand in the glove and wrapped a trauma dressing around the whole forearm.
After exposing the leg and removing the boot, we used a blanket splint (private ambulance forgot regular splints) and loaded all 250 pounds of this poor guy onto the gurney. He denied any neck or back pain, so we didn’t use c-spine precautions. Our TRT team was there for support and began to set up crane operations with a Stokes basket if we needed it, but we were able to utilize the manlift to get him down. The terrain was pretty rocky, so we had to carry the gurney to the ambulance instead of rolling it over there. That took about 6 of us, due to his size and weight.
Once on the ground, we jammed over to the trauma center. En route to the hospital, we established IV access and got 10 mg of Morphine on board (didn’t touch him) and got him there in about 7 minutes. From the time of dispatch to the Trauma center was about 20-25 minutes.
With all the confusion on finding out which entrance, figuring out where the pt was and gaining access down to the manlift and ascending to the 18th floor, I think we did all we could. I don’t know if they will be able to reattach his hand, but the trauma team will do all they can for
him.
Crazy way to start the cycle.
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