The funny thing about not posting all month is that I’ve had something I wanted to write about for 3 week; I just never got a chance.
Every year on the first Saturday of August, my friends, Paul & Deb, have a barbecue on their 30-acre farm in western NJ. The party was a wild success as it always is running well into the night. So late, in fact, that several of us spend the night. Now, as I understand it, Paul & Deb met while working on the Ridgewood, NJ EMS, and presently, she’s on the local EMS team, and he’s a fireman.
So, on Sunday, about noon, as myself & Dan (the other last holdout– another member on the Ridgewood EMS) were helping them clean up, a call come in — a plane crash at the nearby airport.
Now, springing into action is a bit tricky for them, as Paul & Deb have three kids (aged 8, 7 & 4, I believed), so they’ve got to be taken along. So, after taking one car seat out of this truck, Paul drove off. Deb strapped that one into her SUV, buckled up the three kids, and then Dan & I piled in. The airport &emdash; actually, “airstrip” is probably more accurate &emdash; is about two miles away, and we arrived about 15 minutes after the call came in. (Paul & the rest of the fire dept, and well as other EMS were already there)
As the only person in the car who’d never been on an EMS call, I stayed and watched the kids. Now, as I understand what happened, a small plane with four passengers (husband, wife and two nieces), had attempted and then waved off a landing. They climbed to circle around for a second attempt, but stalled and tumbled to the ground, landing beside a house across the street from the airport, and broke into two pieces.
The pilot was relatively uninjured, and was able to walk out of the plane and into the ambulance.
The passenger (I guess one of the nieces) received a serious head injury & had to be air-lifted out.
Another passenger (we think this was the wife), hugged one of the nieces to (apparently successfully) protect her during the crash, and possibly received an internal injury which only showed up when she straightened up. She just missed the helicopter called in for the other patient, so a second one was called in for her.
Anyway, Photo of the party and the crash are in my gallery: (gallery down for the time being)