The Last State Of The Man...

A mass casualty event, such as hurricane, terrorist attack, earthquake, etc., may overwhelm Jacksonville Fire Rescue Division personnel. It may take several days before they can reach individual neighborhoods. Therefore the city sponsors all-volunteer Community Emergency Response Teams, CERTs, to help in their own neighborhoods during an emergency until professional help can arrive.

The JaxCERT website is at http://www.jaxcert.info/ . Ginny and I are members.

Saturday we attended an advanced CERT training class where we learned more about personal safety preparedness, bandaging wounds, and back boarding.

We also learned that one neighborhood team, from one of Jacksonville’s wealthier areas, has acquired a Humvee for their rescue efforts; our own neighborhood team will stumble among the ruins on foot.

Life is not fair!

I did tell our team leader that if we ever get a Hummer, I have room to park it at my house. I’m generous that way.

In training, our group encountered a volunteer casualty with back/neck injuries and we secured him to a back board for transport—sort of.

I knelt up at the victim’s left shoulder attaching him to the board with broad, bright orange nylon straps…Got him buckled up, but, when we went to lift him, my knees gave out, I got the shakes, and I almost fell on top of him! Being too weak to lift the guy surprised me; I had to withdraw and let another team member take my place.

I really thought I could do this.

But I was just too weak.

Poor victim, he had to give me a hand up to keep me from falling on him.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

A Scripture came to my mind: Jesus said, “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first”.

That’s what I thought about our poor volunteer victim after we got through with him—The last state of the man is worse than the first!

However, I was not completely useless in the exercise:

While our team practiced first aid for broken collar bones, burned hands, arterial bleeding, severed limbs, and gasping chest wounds, I showed the ladies in my group how to fold the triangular bandages to make a bunny rabbit.

What did you expect?

I don’t have a Hummer to drive yet.