Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

First Responders Reveal The Worst Injuries They've Seen That Were Easily Avoidable

First Responders Reveal The Worst Injuries They've Seen That Were Easily Avoidable
coastguard.dodlive.mil

Yeah, this totally didn't need to happen. And now you have hospital bills. Don't you feel great?


Accidents happen, sure. But sometimes an "accident" is the result of too much negligence, or something dumb, or just overall complete lack of care for yourself and others that results in injury. If you were an emergency responder, what do you imagine you might come across?

u/chocolateskittle asked:

First responders, what is the worst injury you have seen that was caused by the stupidest and most easy to avoid event?

Here were some of the most intense responses.

Hmmm....

Giphy

Some guy decided kicking a running mower blade that was jammed up was a great idea. He was nice enough to bring his foot in though... in a cooler full of beer.

Noname_left

If I Only Had A Brain

There was an SUV full of teenagers driving down the highway in busy traffic. They are driving pretty aggressively. They try to pass a truck but the truck is towing a trailer and can't slow down quickly enough to let them pass before oncoming traffic gets close, so they slow down and try to make a second pass. The fifteen year old in the back seat decides to pull his pants down and hang his ass out and moon the other car. Once they passed, they overcorrected and rolled. The kid doing the mooning was ejected.

xts2500

Wear A Dang Helmet

Giphy

I'm a paramedic. Saw a woman very messed up due to the lack of wearing a helmet on a job site. A big metal beam fell on her head and then landed on her legs, below the knee. Ended up having one leg with a completely broken set of bones beneath the knee (tib-fib for those keen to the lingo). She was super disoriented and had memory problems while I was taking care of her. Would forget everything every 5 ish minutes, and would want to take the splinting off her leg when that happened. Pretty crazy!

Hamburglar_Helper

That Ain't No Friend

I met a guy while I was in the hospital ER that was getting out after suffering a stab wound to his leg. I asked him what happened and he told me that his friend stabbed him with a carving knife. I asked him why he would do something like that, and he replied, "We were both drunk and decided to see if I could feel it." At least he had a sense of humor about it.

PBandJoe

Dad's Stories

My dad is a police officer on a local highway where a guy had lost control of his uhaul and flipped it. He wasnt wearing a seatbelt and was ejected. He landed (most likely already dead) and the truck came to rest on his head. Only his head.

ThouReaper

The List Just Goes On, And On....

Giphy

25 years in the fire service. Pick one :

(a) dropping your crack pipe into your bed and burning off all your skin, and a lot of skin.

(B) getting drunk and hitting a tree sideways with your grand Cherokee so hard that the frame rails met on the other side. Oh, and not being identified for four days because all you had was fake ID.

(C) stopping your car on the side of I-95 to piss at 2 AM, getting out on the traffic side and getting waffled by a truck.

Seriously, f*cking drunk drivers. Nothing beats getting out of bed at 1AM, spending five hours watching the staties do their investigation, THEN going to work on two hours sleep.

Narrativeoverall

Those Airbag Warnings Are Real

My cousin is an emt and he said one of the nastiest scenes he came upon was a car accident in which the passenger had both of her legs up on the dash. Air bags deployed causing severe fractures on both of her ankles and pushed her knees into her face causing breaking her eye socket. He said she was fully conscious when he arrived and in incredible pain. If I remember correctly she survived and was expected to make a full recovery. He has a lot of crazy stories.

Ltrainer1327

My Hands Hurt Reading This

A theater was being renovated. The theater was designed for a specific show, and that show left after something like a 15 year run. One of the design quirks of the theater was a concrete basement underneath the stage, where machinery would push up some pretty impressive set changes from below. This means the stage had giant open holes in it after all that machinery and stuff was cleared out of the basement. The holes in the stage opened up to a 30 foot drop with bare concrete beneath.

The crew who was tearing down the stuff on the stage took some precautions to make sure nobody fell into those holes. They put plywood over the holes, and set up caution cones all around them.

When they finished tearing down all the stuff on the stage, the last things remaining were those cones and plywood. Someone picked up all the cones, and it was our future-patient's job to pick up the plywood. These were long sheets of plywood - too big to just throw over his shoulder. So he just picked up one side of the plywood sheet and started walking forward, pushing it along the stage floor.

He never even saw the hole he fell through, because the plywood he was pushing blocked his view of his own feet. He fell 30 feet and tumbled on the way down, landing directly only his outstretched hands. He had multiple nasty compound fractures in both arms. Luckily the shattering bones of his arms broke a lot of the momentum, so when his head smashed into the concrete it wasn't enough to kill him.

He woke up while we were prepping him for ambulance transport. He mumbled something to us, mostly due to his injury but also due to the spinal immobilization we put on him, which tucks underneath the chin. He kept mumbling "maaa haaaaa. maaa haaaa huuuu."

After awhile, I realized he was trying to tell us that his hands hurt. Which makes sense. You know, considering the circumstances.

Seemose

What A Blade

Giphy

A friend of mine who works on a surgical ward says that she sees a surprising number of people who try to slice a bagel with their finger through the hole.

So, uh, you know, in general, it pays to stay off autopilot when you're wielding a knife.

freudian_nipslip

Pumpkin Season

I was a firefighter and we were called to a vehicle fire at midnight in a rural area. We get there and sure enough there was a pick-up truck fully engulfed. This wasn't the usual engine compartment fire, the whole truck was roaring. I was was the nozzleman at the time on my engine, which meant my job was to be the guy spraying water on the fire.

As I got closer to the pick-up, I noticed a god awful smell. I was relatively new, so I couldn't place it, but just knew it was putrid. My heart immediately sunk when I remembered there was a missing girl case in our area. People often stash evidence inside cars and burn the whole thing to get rid of evidence. Guns, clothes, even bodies.

As I'm putting out the fire, I'm dreading what I'll find. Something was in the truck bed. The fact that the truck's owner wasn't on scene made me more nervous.

Fast forward and the fire's out. Turns out the truck bed was filled dozens of pumpkins. Thankfully no bodies, but we had no idea where the driver was.

A few days later we heard from the cops that just before we arrived at the fire, a lone guy showed up at the ER with massive, full-body burns. Turns out that as this guy was driving his pumpkins to a nearby farmers market, he hit something in the road. His gas gauge went to empty and he smelled gas coming from his truck. The hero of this story crawled under his truck to assess the damage and used the only light source he had --- a bic lighter. Someone saw the fire and drove him to the ER. Some separate passer-by was the one who actually called in the fire.

hoojoo1121

More from Trending

John Mannion; Mike Lawler
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Dem Rep. Unloads On GOP Colleague In NSFW Rant On House Floor Over Padilla Incident

New York Democratic Representative John Mannion criticized his Republican colleague Mike Lawler, telling him to "get some f**king balls" during a blowup confrontation on the House floor after California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference and handcuffed.

Padilla said he had "questions for the secretary" at Noem's press conference addressing President Donald Trump's deployment of members of the National Guard, and later the Marines, to stop protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration's immigration raids.

Keep ReadingShow less
Cole Escola; Nicole Scherzinger
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions; Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

Cole Escola Shuts Down Speculation Around Their Joke About Nicole Scherzinger's Tony Win

Actor Cole Escola has spoken out about the controversy that was sparked when they made a silly, innocent political joke at the Tonys on Sunday.

Escola, the genius behind the Broadway hit Oh, Mary!, made history Sunday when they became the first nonbinary actor to win the award for Leading Actor in a Play.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of Alex Padilla getting arrested by officers and Padilla during MSNBC interview
@CalltoActivism/X; MSNBC

Dem Senator Speaks Out After He Was Thrown To Ground And Handcuffed For Questioning Kristi Noem At LA Press Conference

California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla spoke out after disturbing footage showed him getting dragged out of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference in Los Angeles yesterday for trying to ask a question—only for law enforcement to shove him to the ground and handcuff him.

Padilla introduced himself and merely said he had "questions for the secretary" at Noem's press conference addressing President Donald Trump's deployment of members of the National Guard, and later the Marines, in response to protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration's immigration raids.

Keep ReadingShow less
Carnie Wilson and Brian Wilson
KMazur/WireImage for The Recording Academy/Getty Images

Carnie Wilson Shares Heartbreaking Tribute To Dad Brian Wilson After His Death At 82

Beach Boys founding member Brian Wilson died on Wednesday at the age of 82. Tributes from friends, fellow musicians, and fans referred to him as a musical genius for his songwriting, musical composition style and innovative recording techniques.

He's also patriarch to a musical dynasty, with his daughters, Carnie and Wendy, and granddaughter, Lola, following in his footsteps. Carnie and Wendy Wilson formed Wilson Phillips with their childhood friend Chynna Phillips—whose own parents are Michelle and John Phillips of '60s super group The Mamas And The Papas.

Keep ReadingShow less
JD Vance
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Vance Tried To Make A Joke About Seeing 'Les Misérables' At The Kennedy Center—And It's Peak Cringe

Vice President JD Vance had people groaning after he made a bad joke about the production of Les Misérables he and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, attended at the Kennedy Center with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

The musical, set in 19th century France, tells the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who is released from prison for stealing a loaf of bread. The story touches on timeless themes such as justice and mercy—and also happens to be about people resisting an authoritarian takeover, which many find ironic given the Trump administration's response to protests in Los Angeles.

Keep ReadingShow less