During a heavy lake effect snow storm we got a call out for a bus that had crashed. The bus was transporting a group back from a ski trip down a rural road when it fish tailed and the rear tire hit a ditch and flipped onto its side. Since this occurred in a rural area they were bringing in ambulances from the surrounding districts, including mine, to assist. I was the driver for that shift and had no idea where I was going, but with help of the dispatcher we found the scene. The snow was coming down so hard that I had to turn the light bar off because the reflection off the flakes was blinding me. When we arrived on scene there was mass chaos with 54 patients looking for care; so triage ensued with the snow continuing to dump on us. We ended up transporting 3 patients, one in our stretcher, one on a back board on the bench and a walking wounded in the jump seat, who was apparently in the rest room when the bus went over. The State was running a snow plow up and down the route to the hospitals just to keep the road open. This particular county had a mass causality plan in place and this happened to be the first time it was used. One aspect of this plan was to transport the walking wounded by school bus, since resources would be tight, as they were. However these people weren’t too keen on getting onto another bus after crashing in theirs. This possibility probably never came up with the planning committee.

As would be expected this was a big story in the area and it received a lot of media coverage. When I was explaining the accident to my family, my mother had one concern, was I wearing my hat. Just so happen a local TV crew filmed me loading up our stretcher patient so I could show her, yes, I was wearing my hat. That wasn’t the focus of the call for me, but she was concerned I might catch a cold.

This was the biggest mass causality event I ever participated in and it scared the crap out of me. I almost quit EMS over it. There’s nothing that can prepare you for a situation like this when you have dozens of real patients all wanting help other than to let your training kick in and start our assessments and do triage.

Although zombies weren’t popular back then, when I think back on it, it was kind of like the walking dead in a bad snow storm when we arrived on scene. This was a Cabin In The Woods situation for me long before I came up the concept.