Injured Victims

There is a certain type of injury that is not very heard of but that very typically happens to victims in a collapse. This injury occurs when the victim's muscles have become crushed for a prolonged amount of time. In many cases the victim's body goes into shock along with anuria and uremia. This condition is a very serious medical condition that is caused by a prolonged crushing of the muscles. When the muscles in the body become trapped and crushed it cuts off the circulation of the blood to the body and affects the person's muscular system. When this happens to a person their body looks pale, squished and they cannot move as a consequence of the loss of hemoglobin.

If a rescue member suspects that a buried victim may have these muscular lesions, they must place a compressive elastic bandage on the affected parts of the person's body so as to avoid edemas. The next step will be to immobilize the affected areas and cover them up proceeding to evacuating the victim immediately. If it is suspected that one of the person's extremities have been crushed for a period of over four hours, it will be necessary to immediately and temporarily place a tourniquet on the base of the extremity to avoid edema and the myoglobin from spreading massively into the victim's bloodstream, followed by placing the compressive elastic bandage and after having loosened the tourniquet and obviously CPR etc if needed. An exterior search can occur a few meters from the ground or at a considerable height, in this last case the rescue unit will need to know which the preventative measures to take. The search and rescue unit will initiate the search operations of buried survivors previous or simultaneous to the rescue and evacuation of the wounded on the top such as the victims that can be seen on top of the debris or partially buried. The unit teams will maintain communication through radios and they will have different assigned ID codes. The rescue team will have to be very careful to not add too much weight that could cause another unexpected collapse. If the search and rescue mission is to be done at night, the lighting teams will have settle in and in as much as possible set up above the work areas as this will avoid the team members that are working from falling.