Ambulance Officer Report

Trying to help but faced with insuperable difficulties:

It took me 45 minutes to travel the 7km into the city. Got to the station. It was condemned, inundated with over a foot of mud.

Went off to the triage centre in Latimer Square.

Bodies were being piled up in one corner . . . I was given a patient . . . she'd fallen from the top of the CTV building to the ground.

After a nightmare drive to hospital, we returned to Latimer Square . . . I became a triage officer deciding who was saveable and who wasn't. At the same time the CTV building was burning just in front of me.

...People were dragged out, carried out on doors, on shutters. Most injuries were severe, massive crush injuries.

...One held a man, gave him his cellphone so he could ring his wife. He told her he loved her, then he died. Another colleague was faced with a horribly entrapped man. There is no way he could be saved while we watched on hopelessly and helplessly and he slipped away through his horrible suffering.

Our first patient brought out was a beautiful 20-year-old girl whose spine had been shattered. She was contorted horribly and was paralysed. She was in irreversible shock and lost consciousness as we went. I fought so hard with a surgeon to keep her alive. She didn't make it.

Our last patient had been pinned for some time by his legs. Crews . . . did every damn thing they could do to get him out. In the end a surgeon had to amputate both his legs.

We waited desperately to get him into the vehicle. I drove as fast as I could on appalling roads that we could later not return on. He died as we arrived in hospital.

In the meantime, another man had been pinned by his legs by a massive beam. We arranged to uplift all the necessary drugs to prevent crush syndrome. When we returned to him he was gone.

The rain started. We were replaced. I wanted to stay but by now was working purely automatically. I returned to sign out and got taken back to my car which was now surrounded by liquefaction. I don't really want to live in Christchurch any more . . .