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3 - The Crash of UA 232 review by Terry Wickham In October, 1987 Sioux City, Iowa had one of those odd days were people were done up in make-up pretending to be hurt, smoke flares were lit, the fire department, hospital personnel and police department were all part of it. It was a disaster drill done on one of the runways of the Sioux City Gateway Airport. Coordinator Gary Brown, Director of Woodbury County Disaster Services didn't like the way things went, citing a lack of communication between response teams, not enough people were involved and other kinks in the rescue response force. Afterwards, he implemented changes to improve things. 2 Years later, a DC-10, United Flight 232 crash-landed in the same airport and this preparedness exercise proved to be crucial in saving 184 lives. George Lindblade and his Sioux City production company have put together an important video that basically tells how a community should work together in a disaster. It's not a documentary or movie but an example of how a city, worked out a system that helped save all those people back on July 19, 1989. Lindblade masterfully begins the tape off with a time log of the forty minutes leading up to the crash. He does this by using a black screen with the date, time, important facts dissolving in and off the screen, while audio recordings between Flight 232, the air traffic controller at Sioux Gateway and the local rescue team radio communication. It's intense and will totally demand your attention, as it is real. After eleven minutes and 37 seconds of build up, the plane finally nears the airport and Lindblade cuts to the famous video footage capturing the plane crashing. You see how fast the plane descends, hits the runway, catches on fire, flips over, breaks into pieces and slides on fire into a cornfield. It's horrifying and amazing to think anyone could survive it. The video then goes into a tactical breakdown of what must be done for a community to respond to such a disaster. The first area is PLANNING: Key people who were in charge of the disaster team, airport, fire department and hospital are interviewed. They each describe how they worked together to make it happen. The key points mentioned were; size of community, that the community worked together on a daily basis, agencies had to mix resources, plans need to parallel each other and practice disaster drills. THE CRASH: Lindblade tastefully shows the crash scene through news reports, video footage, still photographs and helicopter shots. Audio commentary describes what it was like that fateful day and how the disaster teams worked to save lives. THE RESPONSE: video footage is highlighted to show the areas were CFR Chief Jim Hathaway was directing his men to extinguish the fires and help the walking wounded from the crash site. Hathaway explains that it was crucial that his fire trucks didn't use sirens, so that the wounded would walk towards the ambulances and his fire team was able to focus on the fires. About * hour in, United Airlines Flight 232 Captain Al Haynes comes on the tape and tells of how the flight team worked together using all their combined experience to put the plane down. Next Paramedic Ward Palmer, who was the triage officer, comes on to say that he arrived on the scene 3 minutes after the crash. He evaluated the victims and organized them according to levels (1 to 3) of priority. The victims were treated on the runway, in the ambulances until they arrived at the hospital. Most of the injuries were from severe impact and fire. 35 to 40 minutes after the crash, all seriously injured patients had been triaged, transported and had arrived at the hospital. One hour and 15 minutes after the crash, all patients had been treated, transported to hospital or ambulatory care at airport that was away from the crash site. Three hours after impact, all live patients had been transported to the hospitals, regardless of condition or lack of complaint. As a conscious decision was made on site that all patients would be taken to the hospital to be checked. One of the most difficult situations was getting the flight crew out of the cockpit. The cockpit had been thrown off into a different area, compressed into a tangled mess of wire and inner workings of the plane. The cockpit was now an unrecognizable part of the plane and no crewmember was visible. A rescue worker heard one of the crewmembers voices coming from the wreckage. The rescue team had to carefully use a forklift to slowly lift the tangled cockpit, because it was crushed around the crewmembers. As the wreckage was evenly lifted up, each crewmember was removed one at a time. The pathologists had to go on the scene while it was undisturbed and take down as much information as possible. The head pathologist said if he had to do it all over again, he would mention to all the volunteers what they may see (injuries) to prepare them for the worst. This way they would not have been so traumatized by the scene. EPILOGUE: There's a helicopter shot over the entire crash site. It starts at the beginning of the runway were Flight 232 first touched down and flies to where the plane came to a halt. It's haunting because you know that 112 people lost their lives over the course of the scrapped, charred runway that ends up in the cornfield. 40 Security guards spread out over the mile and a half radius of the crash site to ensure that nothing was touched. In the end of the disaster rescue there was a debriefing for all the teams who helped out in the tragedy. This was very important as it keeps people from internalizing the horror. Entire communities are affected by such a disaster. Letting the rescue people know that keeping the horror out in the open is important in the recovery process. Constantly communicating and knowing that it's okay to have emotional responses to such a catastrophe is important. If people don't have emotional response, there is something wrong. This tape is designed for all those professionals who work in positions that could be involved in a disaster. I think the tape would service anyone with potent information that is key to our survival. It teaches us that even in the worst situations people can draw together and overcome overwhelming conditions. CONTACT: G.R.
Lindblade and Co.
Official
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