German Reanactor Injured

[davegargiulo]

I was at the Norwood, Ma 4th of July parade when I was first hand witnessed a group of Germans armed with two artileries numerous Mp40 and 8mm mouzers were ambushing sherman tanks walker bulldogs m3 half tracks scout cars etc. After about six or seven shots fired from a cannon, about ten feet from me a German Reenactor fell to the ground holding his upper leg just below his groin with a baseball sized hole. He was bleeding prefusly, thank God the fire department was just ahead of the armered vehicles. He was a quarter mile from a major hospital. Someone actually captured it on a cell phone video, I am arrowed red in the picture below. This made the news, check out the links

(What happened was: Theres a round gas cover size peice of metal that screws on to the back of the artilery where they put the charge and the guy must have crossed threaded the cap and when the gun when off it shot out the metal and fired back right through his leg and did some damage.)

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/loca ... enactment/

[WC Matt]

I imagine if that reenactor had severed his femoral artery (sounds like he nick'd it) he wouldn't have made it to the hospital even if it was that close. Just glad no one was killed.
Matt

[rickf]

Not to could callous but can you imagine if it missed the reenactor and hit someone in the crowd? In a city full of high priced lawyers! That would be the end of reenactments country wide.

Rick

[rickf]

You can survive a severed femoral artery but action has to be quick. You have to get hold of the artery and clamp it off or tourniquet the leg.

Rick

[WC Matt]

Not to could callous but can you imagine if it missed the reenactor and hit someone in the crowd? In a city full of high priced lawyers! That would be the end of reenactments country wide.

Rick

Thought the same thing> Also occured to me if the senario went down as described above, what kind of repercussions that could have on the hobby as a whole.

You can survive a severed femoral artery but action has to be quick. You have to get hold of the artery and clamp it off or tourniquet the leg.

Rick

Provided there's someone standing next to you that knows to do that....
Matt

[rickf]

As long as you have a belt on you could save yourself. Been done many times. Putting a tourniquet on is going to damage other things but at that point it does not matter.

Rick

[Francis Marion]

As long as you have a belt on you could save yourself. Been done many times. Putting a tourniquet on is going to damage other things but at that point it does not matter.

Rick

They used to tell us that all the time but now it's "put a tourniquet on everything first. Apparently the suspected damage does not become a problem unless it's on for several hours and that's not likely with our current EMS system. It takes about 3-5 minutes to die from a femoral artery bleed so a quick thinking responder could have applied some pressure and saved his life.

[davegargiulo]

There was a nurse in the crowd who had the gloves on by the time I walked over to the wounded guy and I just got out of the way.In just minutes two M/C cops escorted two ambulances to the hospital.One news outlet reported the guy had been shot with a real bullet and like you guys mentioned could ruin reanacting for a lot of people,very popular around NewEngland.Channel 7 had the correct story.Any how the German guy will be fine.
Dave

[rickf]

As long as you have a belt on you could save yourself. Been done many times. Putting a tourniquet on is going to damage other things but at that point it does not matter.

Rick

They used to tell us that all the time but now it's "put a tourniquet on everything first. Apparently the suspected damage does not become a problem unless it's on for several hours and that's not likely with our current EMS system. It takes about 3-5 minutes to die from a femoral artery bleed so a quick thinking responder could have applied some pressure and saved his life.

Francis, That is exactly what I was talking about with the tourniquet damage, lack of blood to rest of the extremity. Things die fairly quickly without blood flow so if you have a situation where a tourniquet is needed it has to be loosened occasionally to get blood to the rest of the limb. In the case of a severed femoral artery it would be moot point since all of the blood would be leaving and not circulating. As you said though, help is just about always close by anymore.

Rick

[davegargiulo]

Just heard that he compound fractured his upper leg and needed to borrow something from an other part of his body to repair his leg and will be laid up for as many as 6 months.He,s a 46yr old mechanic,good luck to him,hope he heels quick.
Dave

[WC Matt]

They used to tell us that all the time but now it's "put a tourniquet on everything first. Apparently the suspected damage does not become a problem unless it's on for several hours and that's not likely with our current EMS system. It takes about 3-5 minutes to die from a femoral artery bleed so a quick thinking responder could have applied some pressure and saved his life.

FM
Thanks for posting that bit of info. I know a fem. art. breach is a bad thing but wasn't sure how fast the bleed out was.

Just heard that he compound fractured his upper leg and needed to borrow something from an other part of his body to repair his leg and will be laid up for as many as 6 months.He,s a 46yr old mechanic,good luck to him,hope he heels quick.
Dave

well that is a bit of good news. we(all the posters on this thread) seemed to go on about a severed artery in the German reenactor's leg. Think that was started by my "lucky he didn't cut his femoral artery" post. Funny how an intire thread can seem to skew off topic...
Matt