So I figured I would kick things off with the story of my first time doing first response at the race track (cars, not horses). I picked an interesting time to start going there, since my first day happened to be an annual event that involves hundreds of amateurs (read: any schlub with a beat up car) trying to keep their junker on the clay track without hitting the wall or each other (though there is was usually a cop car ever year, always closely followed by one that had "get the pig" spray painted on it...). Anyway, I had heard tons of stories from the senior responders about the insanity that goes on at the track (lots of alcohol and drugs, there is a theory that each portion of the grandstands are really a family and they are not allowed to interbred with the other grandstand families). I was really excited to finally start covering something a bit more exciting than mellow little fairs and whatnot, and since I'm an adrenaline junkie I didn't really think about the danger involved...until I got to my posting and had a little chat with my partner.
My partner was this unbelievably sweet, very very french senior responder who also happened to be the team leader for that event. We were posted in center ring. I thought I was going to get stuck up in the grandstands or the pits with one of the Rn's so I was overjoyed when I found out I would be in the center of the track (nothing against the pits or grandstands, they have their fair share of excitement as I later found out, I just assumed the center got more action). I was even more excited when I found out that I would be one of the teams actually standing in the field (therefor absolute first response for crashes) instead of being backup/EMS handover in the ambulance parked in the middle.
So there we are, standing in the middle of a huge circle of cars being operated by mainly intoxicated/high amateur drivers, and I'm so excited I'm almost shaking. The cars are just finishing lining up, then my partner said something that scared the living hell out of me. He grabs me by the shoulders and tells me:
"OK, we stand facing each other at all times. You watch over my shoulder, I watch over yours. If I grab your shoulders and start walking to the side, don't panic, just move with me. It means there is a chunk of the track or a car flying at you and I'm moving you out of the way so you don't get hit. You do the same for me. You're facing corner 4, watch that one because they always hit the wall at corner four and someone might roll into the crowd*. OK?"
Uhhh buuuuh waaaaaaah?! OK! I started questioning just what the hell I was about to get myself into but it was far too late to even think of asking for a posting change since the flag was drop and the race was on. Luckily enough, there weren't any serious injuries that day. We did respond to a t-bone during one of the womens' races but I was mainly stuck in the back of the car stabilizing her head, getting the collar on, and sliding the KED kit down (she turned out to be fine, was just really shaken up but you can't be too safe). A few hit the wall, a few fires (one which involved gas being spilled all over the track before igniting, but that was the fire crews job), maybe a few rollovers (this was years ago and I ended up doing a lot of response at that track so my memory is a bit hazy), but overall it was a good day.
After each race, most of the cars would just park in the center field around us since the drivers had no intention of doing any other racing, so we had to scramble to make sure the keys were out of the ignition of all of them in between races. By the end it looked like a parking lot in there.
Luckily for us, neither of us had to move each other out of the way of flying debris...though I did end up pointing over his shoulder a few times shouting "HOLY SHIT!" to which he just responded "corner 4?"
Good times.
*A car actually did end up rolling into the crowd eventually, but that was years later and is another story for another day.
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