By A.P. Crawford, Periodical Editor and Production Manager (ap.crawford@skipatrol.ca)
On a cold, sunny day in January 2021, someone on the slopes at Sugarloaf Provincial Park called EMS directly and two ambulances arrived unannounced at the patrol room. The patrollers rushed outside and learned about a serious incident that had just occurred on the tubing and drag slope, supposedly a patient that had been crushed by a tree that fell on him. The patrollers informed the EMS staff of the location and how they could access it, and at the same time two of them took a snowmobile to the scene with a third patroller following on foot.
Upon arriving at the scene, the patrollers found a woman kneeling in the snow, holding a baby and next to her was another child with blood on his face. When asked what had happened, the woman, who was in a state of panic, pointed to a man several metres away from her, in a steep, wooded area under a fallen dead tree, sandwiched between the tree and the ground, still lying on his tubing sled. He was trapped, motionless and seemingly unresponsive. The dead tree was approximately 30 feet long, with several broken branches (some sharp) emerging in all directions.
Witnesses stated that the man had had both children on his sled and appeared to lose control with the three of them going off the trail and into the steep, wooded terrain, and then coming to rest under the dead tree trunk. The children would have been thrown off the sled just prior to or upon impact with the tree.
After ensuring that the woman and children were not in immediate danger, the first patroller on the scene went to the man in the woods. The second patroller stayed with the first patients until EMS arrived and took over their care.
At this point the third patroller arrived on scene, joining his colleagues with the remaining patient. Other EMS personnel, firefighters, rescue workers and several park employees had also joined the group, each doing their part in the rescue effort with the patrollers taking the lead.
The patrollers conducted a full assessment of the patient following all COVID-19 protocols. The mechanism of injury was obvious: the patient entered the steep, wooded area at high speed and became trapped under the trunk of the dead tree lying on the ground. Given the number of sharp branches on the trunk, the thorough primary examination proved particularly difficult but extremely important to ensure there were no unseen serious injuries. It was noted that the patient was grossly underdressed for the type of activity, with incipient hypothermia, was immobile with little response to verbal stimuli and with slow reactions due to probable onset of shock, and that he had difficulty breathing due to being trapped tightly under the tree.
The patient was immobilized and protected in place by the patrollers while the tree was being removed. Once the tree was out of the way, the patient was examined completely to determine the full extent of his injuries and remove the sled from under him. He was then fully immobilized with a scoop stretcher on the 45-degree slope in soft snow in the middle of the woods. This patient was more than six feet tall and weighed more than 200 lbs. Once immobilized completely, the stretcher was slid down the slope and then carried on foot to a hard surface where the ambulance stretcher was waiting. From there, the loaded stretcher was rolled more than 1,000 feet through the snow to where the ambulance was waiting in the parking lot. By this time the patient’s mother had arrived on scene, also very upset and panicked, so the third patroller took charge of explaining the situation and calming her as well.
Gilbert Bélanger, Pierre-Luc Vibert and Luc Gagnon worked as a team to triage patients, determine priorities, coordinate more than 20 rescuers including patrollers, fire fighters, paramedics and park workers to effect this difficult rescue on extreme terrain. For their work, these patrollers were awarded the John D. Harper Lifesaving Award in 2021. It should be noted that this was the second lifesaving award presented to Luc Gagnon in 2021 (see the December 2021 issue of 5/5 for this story).
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