Yesterday was my first shift in Ramat Gan! Bailey and I woke up at 5 to catch the bus there by 6am (we were really scared of being late, especially since they changed all the buses in Tel Aviv last Friday and eliminated the bus line that we had taken to get to our station introduction meeting last week). We ended up getting onto a not-so-convenient bus, but as we were walking towards the station in Ramat Gan (and periodically stopping to check these giant maps that they have every few blocks), an ambulance drove by us. Since we looked so lost at 6:30 in the morning, he assumed that we were new volunteers for MDA and picked us up and gave us a lift to the station.
I was on an ambulance with the medic/driver and two Israeli volunteers. They were all very nice. Our first two calls were kind of silly – one was cancelled as we were driving there, and we showed up at this man’s apartment and he was like, “why are you here, who called an ambulance?” Turns out he had been on the phone with his doctor and his doctor had called an ambulance. Next, we got called to a man working at a mechanics shop with back pain. He was sitting on a chair when we got there, but the pain was so intense that he was shaking and couldn’t move his legs without intolerable pain. After taking his pulse and BP, we called for a Natan (ICU ambulance) to give him morphine. They started an IV and gave him some drugs, and the pain went away a bit. They ended up taking him to the hospital, and we went to eat lunch in the Bnei Brak police station (turns out the medic is also a police officer).
Our next call was really intense- we got a call for a car accident. On the way there, the call changed to a mass casualty incident. Two buses had hit each other. We drove the entire way with the sirens on and when we arrived, the scene was a mess. People were confused and standing under an underpass. A Egged bus and a minibus filled with children from a camp had collided. We were there for a minute, and we took 3 people to the hospital: a man covered in tiny pieces of glass, a woman that had really bad neck pain (she was quickly placed on a backboard), and the bus driver (his arm was broken and in a sling by the time we arrived).
(From JPost: In another accident on Sunday, two buses collided on Holtz Street in Tel Aviv.
One bus was transporting children, the other was an Egged passenger bus.
Fifteen people were lightly injured in the crash and taken to Wolfson and Ichilov hospitals for treatment.
From Haaretz: Accident reported between Egged bus and minibus carrying children
Approximately 50 people, among them young children, were lightly injured Sunday in a collision between an Egged bus and a minibus that carried young children in south Tel Aviv.
Magen David Adom arrived at the scene and administered first aid, while several people were transferred to Ichilov and Wolfson hospitals in Tel Aviv.)
There was more, but the bus accident was definitely an exciting call. It isn’t often that such a large accident happens. Anyway, at the end of our shift, the medic that picked us up in the morning when we looked lost drove me and Bailey home in his ambulance.
