Making The Rendezvous
Two EMTs Use A Rescue ATV To Save The Life Of A Patient Stranded on a Muddy Beach
On a Shabbat afternoon two weeks ago, United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Noam Lifshin, was sitting in his home in the town of Shavei Zion in the Galilee, enjoying time with his family, when he received an alert from his communications device, about an emergency occurring nearby. The given location was unclear, but Noam recognized that it was in the region of a nearby army base named Shraga, located by the sea. He remembered the area was full of mud, therefore being inaccessible to any standard car or ambulance. Noam, who heads the organization’s Akko chapter, quickly alerted dispatchers in United Hatzalah, requesting an ATV.
United Hatzalah’s Dispatch and Command Center located the nearest ATV in the city of Nahariya. The head of the Nahariya chapter Menachem Goldberg was alerted and sent out to pick up Noam, and the two set off to the given location in the ATV.
When the pair of EMTs arrived at the muddy terrain, they quickly called dispatch to get a clearer location. The two were shocked when they were told that an Intensive Care Unit ambulance was already at the scene and assisting the injured person.
The two EMTs debated on what to do next. The muddy ground was full of puddles from the recent rain and couldn’t possibly be driven on by an ambulance. Noam and Menachem eventually decided to stick to their gut instinct and continue on. Just fifty meters later, the two EMTs came across an injured man lying on the ground with a large leg wound. The wound was covered in blood, and there was a pool of blood on the ground.
Noam quickly got to work, bandaging the wounded leg, while Menachem alerted dispatchers that there indeed was no ambulance, requesting one immediately. After the bleeding had stopped and the leg was properly bandaged, the two volunteers carried the injured man to the ATV and strapped him onto the vehicle’s patient carrier in order to transport him out of the swampy area, and onto a solid road, where the ambulance could rendezvous with them and take the patient to the hospital.
“When I saw the large pool of blood on the floor, I knew that this was a dangerous amount of blood to lose. Had Menachem and I had listened to dispatchers and left the area, the man would have surely bled to death,” Noam commented. “I am honored and feel lucky to be able to have helped this man. Thanks to United Hatzalah we are equipped with such a useful tool as the ATV which can be used as a patient carrier in difficult terrain. Without it, we would have never reached the man in time to save his life, and I am very grateful for that opportunity.”
