Thursday 17 July 2014

Medical workers say Golden Hour boosted Flight 232 survivor numbers


Two factors combined to help ensure that survivors outnumbered victims in the United Airlines Flight 232 crash at Sioux Gateway Airport, a doctor who helped save lives that day said.

David Greco, the Sioux City doctor who headed the triage unit and determined who got sent first to the hospital after the July 19, 1989, crash, said it was "incredible luck" that 300 members of the 185th Air National Guard unit headquartered nearby were participating in drills that day. Additionally, the crash occurred in daylight, which helped emergency responders find survivors in a half-mile stretch of wreckage in a cornfield.

That aided the response during what Greco called "the Golden Hour," the first 60 minutes when people who suffer traumatic injuries typically live or die.

"The debris was incredible. It looked like a war zone," Greco said.

Although 112 people on the plane died, 184 survived, a statistic at which Greco still marvels 25 years after the crash that drew international attention.

More than 400 agencies responded when the DC-10 aircraft flying from Denver to Chicago had mechanical problems and crash-landed at Sioux Gateway. About 100 medical professionals showed up at what was then Marian Health Center, now Mercy Medical Center-Sioux City.

Greco, now 58 and retired in Huntington Beach, Calif., was the hospital's emergency room director. He had come to Sioux City in 1982 and in 1987 founded the Mercy Air Care service, which flies patients by helicopter to the emergency room.

The chaos of Flight 232 started around 3 p.m. when the jet was over Alta, Iowa. An explosion sliced hydraulic lines, making steering almost impossible.

Greco was at home packing for a flight to California to attend a baptism. He got a call about a plane with an engine out, something that happened periodically.

"That's probably nothing," Greco recalled telling his wife. "Keep packing, I'll be back in a little bit." The next hours were a rush like he'd never experienced.

Greco went to the airport, where he heard a flight controller speaking with Capt. Al Haynes, the plane's pilot. Greco recalled Haynes' steady tone in describing the crippled plane's circumstances.

The helicopter crew soon hovered over the airport, waiting for Flight 232. That made Greco one of few to see the horrific crash in real time from a bird's eye view.

"We saw (the plane) hit the runway; we thought he was going to make it," Greco said. But when he saw the plane in flames, cartwheeling and breaking apart, Greco assumed there would be no survivors.

After landing in the helicopter, Greco ran around the wreck's mile-long perimeter to assess the situation. "I saw bodies left, right," he said. Then a flight attendant emerged from the plane.

"I thought, 'My God, somebody is alive.' She just slid out of the tail, other people came down," Greco said.

Assessing the people on the ground, Greco had to quickly decide who would be whisked off to the hospital at once and who would have to wait. Having 40 ambulances from local municipalities lined up helped relieve the pressure.

"It was a big relief off me, because I'm not good at playing God," Greco said.

In addition, emergency officials, 185th soldiers and others were working fast to get help where it was needed.

"Everybody was working on adrenaline. Everybody's ears were open," Greco said.

The helicopter made two runs with two people each to the hospital, with Greco piloting the second of those. Another 36 patients went by ambulance.

At Marian Health Center, Verna Welte and her staff were ready.

"I don't think it could have gone any better. I think the patients would say the same thing, that they were well taken care of," said Welte, who was vice president of patient care services.

"Not to sound haughty -- because it wasn't me, it was the staff -- but the impression was that we did it right," said Welte, now 80 and retired from a 42-year nursing career.

Welte had been in a meeting when the call about the disabled plane came in. The hospital's disaster plan went into effect immediately, and a command center was set up in the physician's lounge of the emergency room.

The daytime staff who typically left at 3:30 p.m. were told to stay. Nurses were told to free up beds by discharging any patients who could go home earlier than they might have.

One of Welte's most lasting memories is of when the first patients arrived.

"I will never forget this. The hallways were fully occupied by doctors who have left their practices and brought their nursing staffs with them," she said.

They worked through the night, administering critical care for head and chest wounds, burns, broken limbs and concussions.

"You saw a lot of blood. Their appearance was such that you knew that they had been through a lot," said Welte, whose role was to oversee staffing. She didn't personally administer treatment.

The injured kept arriving in waves, but Welte said the hospital had enough materials, medicines and personnel to treat them all.

"(Nurses) did what needed to be done. They didn't go through the bureaucracy of questioning. They stepped up. They saw what had to be done and they did it," Welte said.

Outside the hospital, area residents lined up to donate blood, and others sent food for nurses working extended shifts.

The ranks of those needing attention soon swelled with the arrival of patients' relatives and national news media members.

The last patient was discharged from Marian after eight weeks.

Meanwhile, a receptionist for the former Terra Industries in Sioux City was helping process information about the deceased. She didn't have a medical background, but she had a keen eye for detail.

"I worked the morgue for two and a half days," recalled Patricia Collins, now 73, of Sioux City. "It was a phenomenal experience."

She said the work was "emotionally heavy" but also rewarding. Each evening she would talk about it with her husband, Dick Collins, a member of the 185th who was at the crash scene.

"I am a very strong person. I am a strong Christian and a strong Catholic. I was stone when I was there. I didn't shed a tear," she said.

One case still tugs at her heart, though. It involved a girl of about age 9 with painted fingernails and wearing friendship bracelets.

"That little girl, I think about her today. I just wish her parents know what good care we took of her, as we did with them all," Collins said.

For Welte, too, the emotion came not in the midst of the all-consuming response to the crisis but later, when survivors and family members gathered for a 1990 crash memorial at the hospital, attended by survivors and family members of those who died.

"That was more of a tear-jerker than the day it happened. That was emotional, very emotional."

Thursday 17 July 2014

http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/a1/medical-workers-say-golden-hour-boosted-flight-survivor-numbers/article_e074da59-22dc-557c-8075-5670ecee487e.html

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Seven more bodies recovered in Tanjung Piai boat capsize incident


Seven more bodies have been recovered following Monday’s collision between a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) vessel and a boat carrying illegal immigrants off Tanjung Piai.

The latest figure brings the death toll to 11.

An official involved in the search and rescue operation said that 61 people have been rescued so far.

The seven bodies recovered on Thursday were that of four men and three women.

Monday’s collision occurred following a tip-off received by authorities of a suspicious-looking boat in the waters off Tanjung Piai.

A 10-minute high-speed chase ensued after the MMEA vessel attempted to intercept it.

During the chase, the MMEA vessel was rammed twice.

A massive operation involving several agencies including the police, fire and rescue department and civil defence is underway to find the victims of the collision.

Thursday 17 July 2014

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/07/17/Seven-bodies-recovered-Tanjung-Piai-boat-capsize/

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Typhoon Rammasun kills 38 in Philippines


Typhoon Rammasun is headed for China after battering the northern Philippines, where it killed at least 38 people.

Philippine officials say eight people are also missing after the storm cut a path across the main island of Luzon on Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands are still without power in the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas, where trees and power lines remain down.

Most of those killed were hit by falling trees or other debris. In the city of Lucena, at least three people died when a wall collapsed on them.

Forecasters believe the storm will regain its category three strength as it moves over the warm waters of the South China Sea in the direction of Hainan Island, which is home to nearly 9 million people.

Rammasun, which means "God of Thunder" in Thai, is now a category one storm, with sustained winds of up to 130 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 160 kilometers per hour.

The storm, which is moving northwest at about 25 kilometers per hour, is expected to make landfall in southern China sometime on Friday.

China's official Xinhua news agency said strong gales, downpours and high tides are expected along the country's southern coast.

It said shipping will be halted indefinitely starting Thursday morning in the strait between Hainan and China's southern Guangdong Province.

Ahead of the typhoon, Philippine authorities evacuated more than 400,000 people. This was in an effort to prevent a repeat of last November's typhoon Haiyan, which killed 6,300 people with its tsunami-like sea surges.

About 20 major storms hit the Philippines every year.

Thursday 17 July 2014

http://www.voanews.com/content/typhoon-rammasun-kills-38-in-philippines-heads-for-china/1959294.html

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Helicopter crash kills South Korean ferry rescue workers


In a fresh tragedy related to South Korea’s deadly ferry sinking, a helicopter carrying rescue workers who participated in the search operation for those still missing crashed on Thursday, killing all five on board.

The helicopter crashed onto a street in the southern city of Gwangju just before 11am while traveling back to a base in the north of the country. No other serious injuries were reported. The reason for the crash is unclear.

The crash comes almost exactly three months after one of South Korea’s worst-ever maritime disasters. At the site of the April 16 sinking, divers continue to search for missing bodies, while a key fugitive remains on the run and politicians are squabbling over the creation of an independent committee to look into disaster.

On Wednesday afternoon, 43 student survivors of the sinking arrived at the National Assembly in Seoul to support a hunger strike outside parliament by parents of their dead classmates to demand the swift passage of a bill to set up the committee. The students walked for two days from their high school in Ansan, a Seoul suburb, about 47 kilometers, or 29 miles, away.

Politicians are split over issues such as whether to give the committee power to investigate and prosecute. The ruling party opposes the idea, noting that the case is already being investigated by authorities and insisting that state powers can’t be given to a civil committee.

Opposition politicians and the families argue that the committee can’t function properly unless given such strong authority.

“We will do our best to get the bill passed in order to seek the truth and allow no ‘sanctuary’ of the investigation,” Kim Han-gil, co-leader of major opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, said during a meeting with family members.

Since the disaster, progress has been slow in leading the country out of national trauma.

In May, President Park Geun-hye made a tearful apology in front of the nation and promised to overhaul safety standards, get rid of social ills, including collusion between the government and civilians, and announced a set of measures to prevent a similar tragic case from happening again.

Separate trials of the owners of the ferry company and of captain Lee Jun-seok and 14 crew members of the sunken Sewol are in their early stages. Most of the bodies from the wreck have been recovered, although divers are still making daily searches of the murky sea in search of 11 missing people who traveled on the ferry.

Authorities are also still chasing a man and his son who are believed to been deeply involved in the operation of the doomed ferry.

If parliament fails to pass the bill by Thursday, which is the last day of the current parliamentary session, it will have to wait until next extraordinary session, likely later this month.

Thursday 17 July 2014

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2014/07/17/three-months-after-ferry-sinking-families-seek-new-inquiry/

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