[Attridgeville, GP 31 January 2013]
It has been a crazy 24 hours for JHB paramedics – starting off with the child who was injured yesterday morning after being dragged by a taxi up to this morning where more than 45 emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene of a train accident in Attridgeville.
Investigations are already underway which will determine the reason as to the two passenger trains colliding into one another while using the same line. After the impact, one of the trains derailed and lay at the side of the tracks.
The metal was torn and crumpled from the force of the two trains colliding. After the first emergency vehicles arrival on scene, the area was cordoned off and a staging area for patients was erected nearby. Hundreds of emergency service personnel were either working on freeing trapped patients, coordinating the removal of the injured, treating those that were injured and transporting the injured to hospital.
After approximately two and a half hours on scene, it appears that most of the more seriously injured patients have been removed to hospital and only those that have sustained relatively minor injuries in the incident will be transported shortly.
Three people, including the driver of one of the trains has suffered critical injuries, one of them was removed from the scene by a medical helicopter. Seven more patients suffered moderate to serious injuries and the remaining patients with minor injuries totaled more than 100.
Without every effort put in by each person involved in the rescue, treatment or coordination on scene, we could have seen a much larger scale disaster.
Vanessa Jackson, ER24
084 222 1078
