Crash - cont'd

.....after watching the fireman being led away, my waining mental focus was brought back to reality by another tug.."Doc, they need you again." It was my partner -flashlight. This guy to his credit stayed at my side or around me and played a fantastic role in the bigger picture. He liased perfectly with me and we were covering the bases together. I had yet to become a fireman, but worked in enough dual incidents and with extrication to know what to call out for and how to direct assets. That's when I finally got it.Some people call it the 'zone', some people call it 'being in the moment.' Others say its acheiving focus. To me it was always the same and gained only after taking a deep breath. I guess it was the calming effect of a simple deep breath and being able to mentally image what I needed to do next. Suddenly, I had the impetus and...bravery I guess...to overcome the dwelling harsh images of my first 15 minutes working at a crash scene. Thank god this happened when it did. In those few seconds I was able to erect those emotional barriers, tap into any remaining mental strength I had and trudge onward. What I'd face next sometimes wakes me in cold sweats at night, to this day.I headed back to the fuselage. As a side note, I also picked up on a mood of the area. People seemed to be getting into a rythm, settling in to the tasks at hand. I also noticed some worried looks on faces as firemen and medics were making the journey back to triage and returning. I didn't though have any time, for the moment, to ask what their looks were for. That was coming later."Doc, what do we do with the bodies?" I tired to explain that there was an area set up by triage that was taking the dead. A few of the firemen were able to carry some of the bodies back to triage, but when they returned they said "triage is full, there's no room. They're starting to place the injured next to the dead, they need the space." I sent 'flashlight' back to triage. This guy was a rock. He knew what to do, how to do it, and when faced with complicated taskings from me, he found fast ways to punch holes through any barrier he met. I told flashlight that when I first trudged up the short driveway of this house to the top of the fuselage, I noticed a double garage on the back end of the house. Triage was set up right outside these garage doors. I said 'Find the owner of the house, tell him we need to get into his garage, but for god's sake don't tell him why.' Flashlight looked at me and began to ask why we'd need his garage then then it hit him as he started to mouth 'Wh...?" "Oh, got it." Off he went. How could any homeowner in this situation, having just been awoken by a plane litterally falling from the sky into his front yard (because it ran out of fuel), be expected to comprehend any request with 300 strangers scurrying about. Let alone a request to open his garage so we'd have somewhere to put dead bodies.I returned to the matter at hand. There was a 6x8 patch of earth next to the break in the plane where I was. It was left pretty much in tact and unobstructed. It wasn't in anyone's way of operations and we needed to get at more of the survivors and not waste assets. If we could place the dead close to our operations area, the firemen would be able to keep close and be more effective. Here is where I chose to start housing the deceased in what would eventually become a pile of 13. Of the 17 I physically medically assessed, 14 were dead, 3 were alive - all children.Ladders were going up to the cockpit. They were removing the pilots from that section fo the plane to my right. A woman was hanging unsupported in the crotch of a tree, her arm thought to be wedged between 2 branches. She had been ejected from her seat when the plane split apart when it hit the side of the hill. She was now dangling about 15 feet off the ground. Up to that point, no one thought to look high into the trees for victims. (I later on heard that another person similarly ejected was also found perched high in a tree near the bottom of the wreck.) Another ladder went up and two firemen started to extricate her. She came away from the tree easily, thought to be unconscious, but her arm remained behind. She'd bled to death within minutes of the crash.Most of the dead were intact. Since I'd never worked a plane crash before, I'd expected to be looking for parts of people. That's what the books and training predominantly said. Some though had been decapitated or severed, litterally in half, by their seatbelts. I heard another call. "Doc, come here." I hustled over the few steps where three firemen were hovering over one of the dead in the mounting pile I had created earlier. The person they were looking at had been disembowled, with their innards spewed about. I was set to admonish them for gawking, when I realized what they were looking at. This victim had golf-ball sized... nodules.... I thought, inside their intestine. These were strange because they were white and didn't seem to be attached to anything as one would imagine a cancerous tumor to be. I had no idea and I didn't have the time to spend trying to figure out what I was looking at. " Come on guys, back to work, that's for the ME to figure out." I left that mental image with the person lying there. I had more critical things to think about.As I said earlier, the night was cold, dank, damp and misty. On this sea-side community, there was a heavy hanging fog about the area. Within about 30 minutes of my arrival, an airborne search light started massaging the crash scene. The sound of a jet turbine engine also played in my head. Obviously a helicopter was flying around trying to survey the scene. I didn't know if it was a news chopper or a police medivac. The engine sound became suddenly more pronounced, strained even, and I looked skyward. There about 150 feet over our heads was a police chopper. Hovering very low considering. Some trees were swaying a bit from the rotorwash, which was also starting to kick up paper wrappers and other strewn debris. It was also making person to person voice communication very hard. The sound would increase for a few minutes and then fade away as the chopper transitioned from hover to free form flight.I was then kicked out of my area of command, along with the remainder of the fireman I was working with. Two men had suddenly shown up wearing tan wind-breakers and sporting FBI credentials. Flashlight had shown back up at my side. He reported that he had tried and tried to convince the owner of the house to allow them to use his garage, but the owner wouldn't relent once somone slipped with what we were planning to use it for. Who could blame him. Flashlight said, "Doc, these FBI types, they're telling everyone to back away. How can they do that, there might be more people inside that need to be rescued." I thought quickly and said, "you're right, medical has authority over everyone, except when physical safety is involved." I stood my ground at the head of the plane. Internally, I was hoping I'd have a few more guys that'd stand with me, but alas, that badge carried weight. Flashlight though, was with me to the end.It's always amazed me, the bonds that can be formed in a split second. Mutual respect is a powerful thing to come up against. Here flashlight and I had met and worked together for the last hour and he wasn't budging from my side. He'd throw cautionary statements at me if I came close to being in a hazrad area. I took him at his word and moved away or stopped where I was until he made it safe. I forged ahead on a couple points only to be admonished by him for taking an unneeded chance. He'd move some of our assets to areas to try and free some of the victims and I'd waive him off because I could see it wasn't going to make a difference. The person was dying and were going to die before getting to the hospital, those that could live needed every chance they had. As I said, 15 minutes working together, we realized we complimented one another and that bond was formed. We respected each other. This mutual respect nearly landed us in jail.The FBI weenie (now, let me qualify. I think its a wonderful organization, but in this case, I didn't see the benefit of their reasoning and as such, this night, they were weenies) approached us. We were the last to be standing there and we weren't turning to move away. "Gentlemen, I'm going to need you to move away from this area." I was prepared (and so, to my dismay, was flashlight). I said, "I'm area medical command here, I have authority over everyone including law enforcement. There are still bodies in there, and possibly some that are living. This area is not closed until I can assess it in total." He responded with, "Sir, I've asked you to leave. I need you to move out of this area. Its a crime scene and we have taken responsibility." I retorted with " You and I both know I have ultimate authority here..." the other weenie entered the picture, and flashlight moved in closer... "you can't close down my operations until I say its okay and the victims have been removed. I'll concede that we won't remove evidence or bodies, but any injured I find are coming out and getting treated immediately." Unbeknowced to me flashlight had rolled his flashlight in his hand. It immediately went from being a source of light, to a source of light AND batton. (Maglites - the industry standard in metal flashlights. They have a knurled aluminum handle on them which houses the batteries. You can hold a Maglite by this knurled handle, in the palm of your hand with your pinky and thumb facing the ground, waist high. This is the light source use. Or you can hold it by the lighthead itself, underhanded, so your thumb and pinky face the sky, making it perpenduclar to and at shoulder height. In this fashion, you can use the flashlight as both a light source or with a simple roll of the wrist a weapon.) Flashlight knew this and had chosen, at this moment, the latter. The weenies started to posture, setting one foot slightly in front of the other, their bodies cocked a bit (they were righties and as such their left foot was forward). Flashlight started to posture. I'm in the middle and as I started to see what was about to happen, the second weenie, looking at flashlight, said "drop the light." The first weenie moved his hand into his jacket towards his hip and revealed a pair of cuffs, and in an "oh, by the way" kind of jesture, also causually showed his sidearm.I'm now beet red, chest heaving and ready for a fight. Flashlight had started to raise the flashlight abit further and, I assumed, was a second from striking out. I thought quickly and better of what was happening, and put a hand on flashlights arm and spit-cursed at the weenies "I want your fucking names!" We backed off. As I took a step back, the first weenie thought the situation over from his perspective and processed what had happened. He, I think, relaized I was right and could bring a shit storm down on this by calling over the local police. He offered to me as I started turning away "Listen, we're securing the crash scene and taking names. We'll bring you guys back in once we have a perimeter setup. We found drugs on the plane. One of the people over there was a mule."It all made sense now, though not the getting kicked out part. I was right. I knew I was right. I had the written law on my side. But, I also realized what I had seen before in that dead persons intestines wasn't a tumor, it was packets of cocaine that had been swallowed and were being smuggled in to the US....................