Often in emergency work things go wrong. Sometimes it seems everything goes wrong at once. This was the case one afternoon in March. The test of a good crew is how well they adapt to the unexpected. You can judge for yourself how well we did.

A car hit the back of a garbage truck on one of our local highways. The front of the car was crushed and the dashboard was pushed down pinning the driver's knees.

I was the officer in charge of the rescue truck. The pumper for that district was the first on the scene. When my truck rolled in a couple of minutes later, the police and ambulance were already there.

The Captain of the pumper called for our heavy hydraulic tools (aka. the Jaws of Life). While my crew got the tools ready, I walked up to the Captain to get my instructions face to face. The Captain said that he wanted to do a dashboard roll-up. He already had his truck's spreader tool working but it had reached the limit of its travel. Now he needed the ram from the rescue truck to push the dashboard up enough to free the trapped driver. Our rescue truck carries two rams, one short and one long. We got be short ram and tried to fit it into the door opening. On a typical car the post that connects the front of the roof to the body of the car is called the "A" post. We needed to place our ram between the bottom of the "A" post and the bottom rear of the door opening. Because of the way this car was damaged, the ram would not fit.

The Firefighter operating the ram was one of our 'rookies'. When he found the ram would not fit in the door opening he put the end of the ram against the ground and pushed from there. This was a bad practice because instead of enlarging the opening, the ram started to lift the whole car. We immediately stopped him and told him to back off. This was where our troubles began.

When he tried to reverse directions on the ram and shorten it again, it would not move. Now we had a ram stuck between the bottom of the "A" post and the ground. We got a pry bar and managed to free the ram free. My driver took the ram and inspected it and the hydraulic system. He found a loose connection that allowed the fluid to push the ram open but prevented it from pushing the ram closed again. He fixed the problem.

Meanwhile, the driver was still trapped so we brought out the big spreader from the rescue truck and used it to enlarge the opening. That still didn't free the driver but it did give us enough room to fit the ram in. We pushed the bottom of the "A" post up and forward with the ram. This will usually lift the dashboard quite nicely. However, on this car the dashboard ripped away from the "A" post and stayed on the driver's knees. It was time to try something else.

We decided to pull the driver's seat back. That involved placing a come-a-long on the trunk of the car, breaking the back window and passing a chain through to the back of the driver's seat. The chain should go straight under the seat, come up the front, across the top and get hooked back on itself on the outside of the upright seatback.

When we tried to wrap the seat, we found that the chain would not fit. This car had power seats and the electric motors were underneath. The best we could do was to wrap the chain around one of the brackets that held the seat to the floor. When pulling a seat, usually nothing happens until the support brackets fail. Then the seat jumps back a couple of inches. After that you can pull it smoothly. On this seat that's how it went. But, when the seat came back it also came up. That put pressure on the driver's knees so we stopped the pull. The Captain said to ease off on the come-a-long but again we had a problem. The come-a-long is designed to pull in the chain or to let it out under control. When we switched it over to let the chain out, it wouldn't work. Something had jammed inside; we couldn't release the tension.

The driver was still being lifted against the dashboard so we removed some of the 2x4 wooden cribbing that we had used to support the come-a-long. That relieved the pressure on his knees, but he was still trapped.

Our next plan (Plan C if you're counting) was to remove the "B" post, cut the steering wheel, unbolt the seatback and take the driver out the side of the car. The "B" post is the one at the back of the front door near the driver's head. It runs from the roof to the floor and has the rear door attached to it. Cutting the top was not a problem but our ram was still wedged against the bottom. Once a spreading tool is in place it cannot be removed because then the objects you are spreading will squeeze together again. Before removing the ram we braced the dashboard with some 2x4 cribbing. Then we removed the ram and cut the bottom of the "B" post.

Meanwhile other Firefighters had cut the bottom half off the steering wheel to allow more freedom. Now we set to work on unbolting the seatback. That allowed just enough room to lay the driver back and slide him out sideways.

This whole operation took about 45 minutes. I don't know the extent of the driver's injuries because the Paramedics were already doing patient care when I arrived. He was still alive and conscious when he left the accident scene so I count it as a success. It would have been nice if things had gone a little smoother, but that's why there is no substitute for experience.

As we packed up, someone pointed out that this three-lane highway was shut down to one lane for more than an hour during the afternoon rush and there was only a back up of about 200 meters. On any other road we wouldn't have been able to see the end of the cars, but this highway is a new toll road. The traffic is always light because most people seem to be as cheap as I am and refuse to use it.

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FIRES These are stories about recent fires;

• House Fire
• Tanker Truck to a Garbage Bin Fire
• Tanker Trunk to a Hopper Fire
• Car Fire
• Warehouse Fire
• House Fire
• Apartment Fire
• House Fire

MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS These are stories about car and truck accidents;

• Single Car Rollover
• Head-on Crash
• Rush Hour Accident
• Single Car Flip
• Car vs. Garbage Truck
• Van Rollover
• Sport Utility Vehicle Rollover
• 500m from the Dealership
• Left Turn Mistake

RESCUES These are stories about rescues we have made;

• Man Trapped in a Trailer

HAZARDOUS MATERIALS These are stories about emergencies involving Hazardous Materials;

• No Calls

MEDICAL We go to a lot of medical calls, but it is not fair to the people involved for me to describe their medical problems here. I can tell you about one incident and how it effected me;

• Stress

OTHER Sometimes interesting things happen around the Firehall;

• Skunk in the Firehall