February 24th, 2011 at approximately 2000 hours my department was dispatched for a single vehicle accident w/ unknown injuries or entrapment. Our rescue and an engine went in route within 2 minutes us being dispatched. we arrived on scene at the same time as the ambulance. Once on scene we found a single vehicle had run off the road, went airborne, hit a guide wire from a telephone pole, and the vehicle was resting in between 2 trees. the first problem we encountered was the guide wire that was hit actually was thrown in the air and had wrapped itself in the high tension lines above. All crews were informed of the issue. Once the vehicle was reached by our personnel, it was confirmed that the driver was entrapped. Crews from our rescue and engine worked to stabilize the vehicle and remove the roof. Once the roof was removed the patient was further stabilized, she was removed from the vehicle. While on scene the road we were working on was shut down by the local pd on one end and our squad had taken position at the other end of the road to divert traffic. In the middle of the rescue a second ambulance came into our scene at a high rate of speed and almost clipped our squad. The ambulance even ran over one of our cones that were up to shut the road down. Luckily our personnel were not in the way. The ambulance came with a driver only and had not called to our command for instructions so it was a surprise to us that it was coming.
LESSONS LEARNED:
We had learned multiple lessons from this call. We were informed from the electrical company that since the guide wire was made of metal; it could have caused the ground around the pole to be charred with electricity. Second lesson was that even knowing a road way is shut down; it doesn’t make it a safe zone from vehicles. The odd part of the whole call was that our station was holding a highway safety class at the time of dispatch.
