My name is (YOUR NAME)...

I realize I said of the stories I´m going to share, they normally happen regularly, but this is the only exception. I hope. So, after sitting through two days of Emergency First Responder training, including a video that obsessively demonstrated the importance of blue gloves and the opening line of asking if you can help someone, ¨Hello, my name is (YOUR NAME) and I´m an emergency first responder. Can I help you?¨ We continuously joked with the slightest slip, bug bite, or complaint by saying our opening line. During dinner on a Wednseday night an emergency radio call came in from a staff member who had been leading a couple people on an overnight excursion. They had been doing everythinga ccording to a planned schedule which as a night walk at the top of a waterfall. While walking up the steep trail to the waterfall, the overcorrection on the slick trail caused someoneto slip through some steep brush and over the side of a 20meter waterfall, landing in very little water. The possibility of serious injury prevoked a very careful rescue plan as the group was an hour walk away- in the darkening jungle. The first froup of guys headed out with the spinal board, putting our training to the test. 45 minutes later, a second, larger group left. The quickest trail to the road was noted, the volunteers constantly and carefully witched out carrying the victim on the spinal board. Being on of the only Spanish speaking volunteers, I waited by our access to the raod for the truck that was going to drive the guy and a staff member to the nearest hospital. I rode with the truck to the pick-up point where head torches of 20 people finally emerged. Straped in the back of the truck was a possible spine injury about to drive two hours to a hospital- one of which would be on an unpaved ropad. It took four hours to extract him, three different towns, one week of recovery- but amazingly NO INJURIES!!