By Brendan Roberts
Melbourne Herald Sun
Copyright 2008 Melbourne Herald Sun
MELBOURNE, Australia — Each death on Victorian roads has a morbid familiarity for paramedic David Llewelyn.
While the image — always graphic and horrifying — is never the same, the smell and sound of each tragedy remains a constant.
“You can smell death at the scene,” Mr Llewelyn said just days after attending another fatal collision, this time at Lynbrook, in Melbourne’s outer southeast.
“Due to the impact of a collision, the battery acid, fuel, water mixes and draws on your sense of awareness.”
A deafening noise kicks in as rescuers try to rescue the injured from twisted cars.
“The sound of the power cutting tools, the generator starting up for the jaws of life, the helicopter landing — you know when you hear these things that it’s life and death and something significant.”
Mr Llewelyn said moments or images from each crash scene often resurfaced in the minds of the attending paramedics hours after the incident.
As when they saw a relative kissing an injured boy at the Lynbrook crash scene, paramedics are often reminded that the carnage they’re helping to repair isn’t too far from home, he said.
“There were four kids in that car and they should be going to the pictures and enjoying their school holidays but instead two are dead and the others are fighting for life.
“And every child you come across could easily be your son or daughter or nephew or niece.
“You have an insight into the years these victims face ahead — the mental anguish, physical pain, loss of income, it’s a tragic snapshot of what their life might become and a lot of them are just kids.”
The regularity of attending road fatalities can also take a heavy toll on the paramedics.
“It’s an accumulative effect — it reinforces the dark side of life, this repetitive exposure to death, it can really drag people down and we can all relate these incidents to our own family life,” he said.
Mr Llewelyn said because each crash had a different trigger, it was difficult to give drivers a specific safety message.
“People just have to be aware and take responsibility for what they do,” he said.