CSR continued.

One of our operators went down from heat in the primary containment, two levels above the exit, and about equidistant from either ladder down. He is, thankfully, at home now, resting. When he was accessed he had no sensation in his extremities or his face.We covered him in ice packs, cut his outer clothes away, put him on high flow O2, a pulse oximeter. He came to shortly and regained conciousness and some strength.

The ambulance was brought in to the reactor building and held at the inner railroad door. The area we were working in is High rad, high contamination, high noise, and way to warm. We rigged two separate lowering setups, one for each elevation. The patient was secured in a Half Back, with spinal immobilisation. When we got him outside, he was transported to the local ER for an IV and rest.

This is a classic case of being too close to your patient. He is one of the people that every one likes. Thus our Incident Command System went to $h!T. The assigned commander was doing patient care, the second commander on scene was trying to manage the rescue from the inside, I was the third commander on the scene, and wound up doing rigging and safety in the containment. I did turnover command to someone outside before I went in.We are the most experienced rescue responders, and we had a job to do, we handed the efforts off to others and went to care for our friend.

Other knowledgeable people popped up and we put them to work, hauling equipment, some mechanical people did part of the rigging and managed lines.The good news is we had enough people to eat the guy on the spot and not have to carry him down, but as no salt was available, we brought him out intact. The bad news is the same, enough people to eat the dude, there's no place to stand around there.

We are generally very careful about not spreading contamination, that went out the window. The Rad Protection techs were about to allow me in wearing my street clothes, I declined the offer. I chose instead to invest twenty seconds in donning a paper suit shoe covers and gloves. I find it amazing that no one had to shower, nor were any even contaminated.

The thing that really bugged me was the lack of equipment available to work with. We train with lots of top quality equipment. Now, in the middle of the night, I have to do the real deal, and I don't have enough equipment to do much more than tie my shoes. A lot of things I would have done, given tools and two minuets, settled out into using every piece of rope I had for something. In this business having just enough, means your options are limited, and load ratios and safety lines are the things of theory.The next real problem that looms on the horizon, what if I'm the patient?

Life would suck huge!
Posted by DW at 3:43 PM

P.S.
This is a repost, I have been spammed. I am sorry to report I have activated the protection against that.