A plane plunges into the Florida Everglades. Two passenger trains collide in Maryland. A tour bus runs off the road in Colorado. All of these events are "the big one" for the EMS crews from the local areas involved. Disaster plans go into place, mutual aid is called in and everyone gears up for an all-out rescue effort.
But what might be the "call of a lifetime" for many of us is all in a day's work for the men and women on the "Go Teams" of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This small but incredibly busy federal agency is charged with investigating and determining the probable cause of all accidents involving licensed commercial passenger carriers in the United States.
While major plane crashes get most of the publicity, NTSB investigators also probe accidents involving all kinds of transportation, even interstate gas and oil pipelines. Their work is tedious, and difficult. They must literally re-create accidents using evidence ranging from whole aircraft fuselages to tiny scraps of debris or a split second of sound on a cockpit voice recorder just before a crash.
The NTSB teams look at an accident from many different perspectives. Among them: human performance what did the people involved (pilots, engineers, drivers, passengers, dispatchers and controllers) do that might have affected the incident? Engineering factors are also considered. Was there mechanical failure of some vital part or was the vehicle stressed beyond its design capabilities? Was there a maintenance flaw or faulty parts?
Other NTSB experts examine environmental factors, such as the weather, road or rail conditions, visibility, the terrain in which the crash occurred and other things that might have been factors in the incident itself or affected survivability.
All of this painstakingly gathered information is compiled, examined, analyzed and discussed by the field investigators and technical experts at the NTSB. Their conclusions are given to the five presidentially ap-pointed Safety Board members, who issue the final determination of probable cause and make recommendations for the future.
As you can see, the NTSB has a complicated and difficult job. Alert and aware emergency personnel who work at an accident scene can make a major contribution to helping NTSB investigators make an accurate determination of probable cause.
The first step for responding emergency personnel is to understand that absolutely everything about a scene could be a clue to the cause of the incident. When responding to a transportation accident, it's important that everyone on every crew be aware of the value of maintaining the integrity of the scene until the NTSB investigators can do their work.
Obviously, rescue, fire suppression and EMS care must take first priority. But with a little bit of thought, pre-planning and on-scene discipline, management of a crash scene can be accomplished with a minimum of destruction or disruption of critical clues. This can start with approach to the scene. In 1994, a jetliner crashed in the woods near the Pittsburgh airport. It was obvious that nobody onboard survived the wreck and subsequent fire. Yet, several hundred rescue workers flooded into the crash site, contributing nothing but gross contamination of the scene. Once an accurate size-up is made and the extent of an emergency is clear, early scene control is perhaps one of the most critical elements in managing an incident and in assisting the NTSB investigation.
As victims are treated and removed from the scene, a marker should be placed where each person was found, and a careful note made of the position the victim was in when rescued. Also, the dead should be left where they lie, at least until a certified forensic photographer from the local police or medical examiner's office can record the scene. And if it is possible within a reasonable time frame, bodies should be covered but not removed until NTSB teams can view them. As gruesome as it sounds, the exact condition, position and location of the dead may be vital clues to the probable cause of a transportation accident and provide critical data for efforts to prevent future incidents.
As you treat survivors, it's important to listen to what they say about the incident. While some may be too shocked and frightened to tell what happened, you'll find some who can't stop talking about their experience. This is a normal stress reaction but you may also be the first (and maybe the only) person to hear critical details. Be alert for common threads of information. For example, if one person says, "I saw smoke from the right engine," or "the driver seemed to be sleepy," it may just be an individual observation. But if you find several survivors saying the same thing, pay attention, write it down and make sure that you advise your incident commander so that the NTSB investigators can be alerted.
Document all injuries, however minor. The NTSB will want to check your treatment records to see if there was a pattern of injury. If, for example, many plane crash survivors complain of earaches or have bloody noses not caused by trauma, it could be that there was a sudden decompression of the aircraft. This could be a clue to the failure of a door seal or some other pre-crash breach in the integrity of the fuselage. Every scrap of evidence is important, even if you might not think so at the time.
Rich Adams, a Firehouse® contributing editor, is a volunteer EMT with the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad in Montgomery County, MD. He operates RDA Associates Inc., a public safety video production and consulting firm in Silver Spring, MD.
