A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

death—and not just from the accident. As they worked frantically over the big man, they saw that his eyes had become fixed and dilated. Henry could no longer get a pulse, and he began CPR while another officer began forcing air into the bus driver’s lungs with an ambu-bag.
    Helicopters from Seattle’s television stations had already begun to circle the crash site, sending images of the disaster into homes across Washington State. The newscasters’ voices were low and worried. This was no ordinary news story.
    A helicopter moved in—too close. For ten seconds, the image of Mark McLaughlin appeared, showing emergency workers hunched over him as they desperately administered CPR to try to bring him back. The newsman back at the studio said urgently, “No, no—pull back. PULL BACK!” and the picture on the screen changed to a wider shot of the crippled bus.
    People watching at home knew they had intruded far too much into someone else’s life. Perhaps in someone else’s death. It was too early for any next of kin to be notified, and there was always the chance that someone who loved the injured man on the roof might be watching.
    David Henry yelled down for a fire department ladder truck to move in and bring a backboard up. If the driver was going to have any chance at all to live, Henry knew they had to get him to the hospital immediately. Carefully, they strapped the man whose name they didn’t even know yet to the backboard and lowered him off the roof.
    But it was too late. Despite all their efforts, Mark McLaughlin would be the first person in the bus crash to be declared dead.

    Seattle is known for its outstanding fire department, both for its pioneer Medic One program with highly trained paramedics and for its arson unit, Marshal Five. Now its paramedics were called upon to use their skill in “triage”; this wasn’t a test situation where “victims” are made up to look injured with fake blood, cuts and bruises. It was a real disaster that not one of them could have ever imagined.
Triage
is a French word that means to winnow out or to sort. It is an essential response to catastrophes where many, many people are badly injured. Most lay persons became familiar with the concept of triage after the horrific bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995.
    Rescue workers, physicians and paramedics are trained to quickly evaluate the conditions of those injured, to separate the living from the dead, the critically injured from those who can wait a bit for treatment. There were some beneath the Aurora bridge whom no amount of first aid would help, some who looked terrible, but who were only bruised and battered, and far too many who needed treatment immediately.
    Seattle firefighter/paramedic Andre McGann faced an awesome task; his instinct and experience made him want to start helping the first person he saw, but his job that day was to separate the living from the dead, and the critical from the other injured.
    Wearing a bright orange vest that read “TRIAGE,” McGann carried rolls of the thin colored ribbons like surveyors use, and a roll of adhesive tape as he went to work, marking human beings.
    Was the patient breathing and did he have a steady, moderate pulse? Was his blood pressure within normal limits? Was he able to talk intelligibly?
    McGann moved rapidly among the crash victims. Those in the worst shape got a red ribbon around the upper arm; they were to be transported by ambulance to a hospital ER at once. The walking wounded got green tags, and those who were in serious condition—but who could speak—got yellow ribbons. The dead got black ribbons. Later wrist bands would be put on with words that started with letters of the alphabet, followed by “Doe”: “Apple Doe,” “Blackberry Doe,” “Cadillac Doe . . .”
    Carol Ostrom, a
Seattle Times
reporter, would ask Andre McGann later to relive those first minutes after he arrived at the unbelievable scene. The most difficult task was examining those injured who were not visibly breathing. McGann recalled grimly, “You give them one shot—tip their heads back.”
    If he could detect one murmur of breath, he quickly slipped on a red ribbon. If they didn’t breathe at all, he tagged them black, and resolutely moved on to someone who might have a chance to live.
    McGann, himself the survivor of a pedestrian–car accident when he was seven, had lived though twenty-seven fractures and critical internal injuries. Being a paramedic was his