|
|
 |
||||||
 |
Failure To Communicate E-mails show blood bank, Editor's note: This is one in a series of follow-up articles on the massive multivehicle accident on Interstate 40 on Dec. 22, 2007. Lack of communication between agencies during and after the 80-car pileup on Interstate 40 three days before Christmas were more of a problem than originally reported, according to city records.
One of those problems was notifying Northwest Texas Healthcare System and another was letting Coffee Memorial Blood Center know about the wreck, according to e-mails The Amarillo Independent has reviewed. Dr. Rush Pierce, the city of Amarillo's Public Health Authority, wrote Kevin Starbuck, Amarillo-Potter-Randall Department of Emergency Management coordinator, Walt Kelley, the city's emergency director, and Theresa West, also of the city. Jean Whitehead, the Emergency Department head at Northwest Texas Hospital, did not receive official notification of the incident and was in the emergency room because of an incident in Pampa. Gwen Campbell, who handles trauma services at Northwest, also failed to hear officially; she heard it on her scanner at home, the e-mail states. "Maybe these notifications should have been internal at NWTH, or maybe they should have come from Emer Mgmt (Emergency Management)," Pierce wrote. "I'm not sure, what is best; but in my opinion we need something that is reliable, redundant and automatic." That wasn't the only communication issue. As reported in the Jan. 10 Amarillo Independent, the blood center was not notified, but the public record e-mails provide more detail. "During Saturday's event, we were not advised at any time by any means," Dr. Jim Rutledge, the blood center CEO wrote on Dec. 24. "Assuming the official disaster plan was activated, we needed to know about this as soon as emergency officials realized that such a large number of cars were involved." Traditionally, blood supplies are tight during holidays, and for the blood center that was a main concern, especially after a large drawdown that Saturday morning. One patient at Northwest needed 20 percent of the center's A-positive blood supply. The blood center's procedure, when notified of a mass casualty event, is to account for the blood inventory at Northwest, Baptist St. Anthony's Health System and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and it can activate a call for blood to be flown in from other centers or to bring in staff and run unscheduled drives, according to the e-mails. The time log that the city prepared for its after-action meeting on Jan. 4 notes first notification of the crashes to the Amarillo Fire Department was at 10:20 a.m. and collisions continued at least through 10:38 a.m. with a 10:54 a.m. notation that an additional 30 to 40 cars were involved. The timeline also shows a second alarm at 10:34 a.m. and a third-alarm mass casualty event at 10:40 a.m. Communications Center, or 911, tapes, also tell a story. The center received at least five calls within the first five minutes after the initial call, including one describing the low visibility and icy roads. "It's about to be a real bad, big pileup," one of the first and unidentified callers said. Some of the calls described the mayhem: "They're running into each other." Other calls asked for how to handle the accident, how to get medical help to themselves or for directions to get to injured or stranded friends or family. But 37 minutes after the initial call, two bizarre requests came in response to the operator's greeting of "What is your emergency?" The first, from an unidentified male, asked for directions but couldn't tell the 911 operator where they were and where they wanted to go. "We're in Amarillo on some avenue and they've got cars everywhere here," he said. He finally hung up on the operator when she couldn't help. The second was from a clearly frustrated woman whose emergency was, "I am stuck in traffic between Lakeside and Highway 60. I have a niece that's getting married in Panhandle and I'm not going to make it. Is there any reason why we're stuck here in this traffic?" After the operator explained about the major pileup, she asked, "Where can I get to Panhandle from here?" "I have got to go," she added emphatically. When the woman, the arrogance in her voice obvious, insisted on getting directions from the 911 dispatcher or the number of someone who could give her directions, the operator tried to explain that the route to Highway 60 was down to one lane and she, the operator, didn't know if other routes were open. Finally, deciding she wasn't going to get an answer after some time on hold, the caller realized the jig was up. "She just put me on hold so I forget about her," the caller said. "She said you can go wherever you want." E-mail
comments about this story Posted: January 17, 2008
|
|
