For the second time in less than a month, I've had to dial 911 on my cell phone.
Yesterday we were driving across a mountain, headed home on a clear, beautiful day. We came around a tight curve behind another car and found two motorcycle riders lying on the road, with their bike on its side 20 yards or more down the hill. That was just yards after we decided not to take a longer, more scenic route home.
(Curvy roads really have me nervous!)
Both cars stopped to block traffic and protect the riders. The riders were just starting to stir, and we checked on them. The one was bleeding from his mouth and in the process of standing up. The other had no visible injuries, but she thought she'd broken her arm, and she didn't really try to get up.
They had been in a small group of Harley-style bikes, when they glanced off the guard rail and wiped out. Dirt and grass in the road indicated that they'd come back on the road and gone off on the shoulder before stopping in the traffic lane.
Each was wearing the half-helmets popular with Harley bikers, along with jeans, leather chaps, boots, and leather jackets. I'm sure that gear helped protect them, although better helmets would have protected the man better.
After seeing that the two were relatively in good shape, we set about trying to get cell signal to call 911. My phone showed good signal, but I had a bad connection. One of the other passersby went up the mountain to get through.
From that point on, someone tended to the bikers, while a team of us directed traffic around the wreck site. A couple of us set out flares before guiding cars around the blocked lane. The curve was tight enough that we needed multiple people to keep in contact about which direction traffic was coming through.
I helped with that until fire, rescue and state police arrived. My buddies from the fire department arrived as I was setting another flare downhill of the accident, and they later teased me about that and the fact that I didn't have a camera in the car.
Both riders were taken to the local hospital in decent condition, thankfully.
Now that I've had the chance to "decompress," I realize that I should have taken more of an active first aid role. Neither biker should have moved around, probably, for fear of neck/spinal injuries. I thought of that but didn't do anything about it.
I felt kind of handicapped because I was in the rental car, so I didn't have my first aid kit (w/latex gloves), nor any of my traffic safety gear. At least if I'm in a similar situation, I'll have more of an idea of how to react. And not to make excuses, but I feel better about what I did than I feel about the rescue squad member that drove by the scene without stopping--before emergency crews arrived.
Now that this has passed, I hope not to see "Emergency" in my recently-dialed list on my phone, nor see it switch over to "Emergency Mode" for a long, long time.
Posted by JRC at October 16, 2005 09:43 PM | TrackBack