By Wendy Reeves
Huntsville Times
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Emergency responders spent weeks preparing for a worst-case scenario at Airshow 2008 — which led to fast response and treatment to those injured during a Sunday afternoon storm that killed a 5-year-old boy.
“This disaster went very smooth under the circumstances,” said Don Webster, chief operations of HEMSI ambulance service.
Aaron Josiah Miller, 5, of Madison was struck by an air conditioning unit and killed.
Webster said within 46 minutes after the storm hit, 12 patients who needed hospital treatment were at the emergency room. Most of the injuries included cuts, lacerations and fractures.
Before the storm hit and toppled several tents Sunday, Webster said HEMSI paramedics had tended to three patients.
On Saturday, he said it was much busier with 61 patients and nine taken to area hospitals. Paramedics spent the day taking care of heat-related emergencies, a possible stroke, cardiac patient and a variety of other minor injuries.
“On Sunday, the bottom line is everything was going well. It was not hot and we didn’t have an overwhelming crowd,” Webster said. “We were all anticipating a nice, relaxing day.”
He said there were two ambulances and 20 emergency medical personnel on hand, including seven firefighters from Madison Fire & Rescue and Huntsville Fire & Rescue who are part of the Alabama Heavy Rescue Team’s medical specialist unit.
In addition, MedFlight was on hand with three pilots and two health care specialists. And there was a large medical tent with 20 mobile beds.
Webster was stationed at the public safety incident command center with Huntsville police, airport public safety, Huntsville fire and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.
“Throughout the day, we were keeping an eye on the weather through two weather links,” he said. The official decision on whether to suspend the show was up to the airport authority, he said.
“We all got together at 1 p.m. to look at a storm about 20 to 25 miles south of our location that was throwing lightning,” he said. “And then at 2:05 p.m. when we knew we had rain coming in we notified all of our personnel that the rain was coming and the airport was taking care of its announcements.”
After the storm hit, he said paramedics headed into the damaged area to look for injured people.
“We established a triage area and notified both hospitals that we had a disaster situation,” Webster said. “We requested five more ambulances, three additional fire trucks from Huntsville Fire & Rescue and two from Madison Fire & Rescue, as well as the volunteer Huntsville-Madison County Rescue Squad.”
Rescue crews used air bags to lift the air conditioning unit off the boy.
Everything had to be coordinated with the airport police because the airport still had commercial traffic on the east side of the airport.
“We spent so much time planning in the event of a plane crash but it worked for the situation we had,” he said.