It probably wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that the strength of a country’s institutions can be gleaned from the strength of its emergency services.
After all, whether a disaster is natural or man-made, the resulting damage and chaos will strain every government’s ability to respond and maintain law and order.
This is why a well-trained and well-equipped emergency response force can literally save lives because they can do what they need to do with a cool head when everyone else is like a headless chicken running around in a panic.
Watch the EMT
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Video credit: Rumble
One of the more important skills any EMT has to learn is the ability to give firm commands. As mentioned earlier, ordinary people who are caught up in disasters tend to panic and don’t think straight. This is why there is usually chaos in the first place.
When that happens, sometimes it makes it difficult for emergency first responders to either do their jobs or get to where they’re needed. And it’s in those cases that first responders need to be able to give firm commands to get people back in line so to speak so that the first responders can perform their duties.
An example of this was put on display on the afternoon when two semi-trucks crashed on the highway, sparking a blazing fire that held up traffic all along the freeway. An ambulance was sent to the scene but it had difficulty making its way to the crash site because other motorists had occupied the shoulder in an effort to get ahead of everyone else.
This forced the ambulance to go off-road, on the embankment, just to get through. One of the EMTs in the ambulance was so fed up that he used the loudspeakers on the vehicle to tell the erring drivers that this is why they should stay on the main road and keep the shoulder free. And he wasn’t shy about using some colorful language, too.
Fortunately, the ambulance still managed to get to the crash site.
Aaron Maguire, who was caught in traffic on I-15 NB outside of Baker, San Bernardino, California, witnessed the ambulance attempting to weave its way through the traffic jam and the EMT’s colorful words.
He said: “We could see that there was a fire but couldn’t see what was on fire exactly.
“All traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped, that was when people tried to get around all the stopped traffic by using the shoulder.
“All I know is two semis were involved and it all lit on fire, I tried looking up multiple reports about it but it was never stated definitively what occurred.
“I was almost afraid it was going to flip it was so far down the embankment.”
Replaced!