team emergencies

[Sean_330]

I was just wondering what is the worst emergency that has happened to your team as far as the team members go (such as injuries, having to call 911, etc...) With my team at least, it seems like most of the damage in FIRST happens not to our robot but to the people working on it.

[gniticxe]

"The Goal Is Zero"
heh, I always get a little chuckle out of that - it is plastered on nearly every wall in our DuPont fabricating facility. In short, 'the goal is 0' refers to safety incidents...but we have a fun time joking about "the goal is zero...productivity...creativity...etc Such a huge corporation as DuPont needs to watch out for safety a lot, and because we have engineers from DuPont helping us, that motto gets passed along to us. We recently reenacted our "Days without an incident" sign up near our playing field mock-up
As for a FIRST related injury...this being my second year, the only really serious thing happened last year at nats. A team member had a case of dehydration and went out alone. Not so good...Eventually, found the member who had passed out due to dehydration. obvious tip : go around with friends (mmm mob mentality), and drink lots of water when in florida

[Jeff Waegelin]

We just had an accident today. One of our team members was cut while assembling one of our goals. He had to go get 9 stitches. The funny thing is, he got hurt last year by a pipe on the bridge. Not too good of a record with pipes, I'd say.

Our team likes to practice safety and avoid the hospital as much as possible...but sometimes it doesnt happen...

back in november or december we were working on a community service project and a kid was programming a robot arm while some other people were doing something ot the arm...but when the kid sent the program to the bot, an error in the program made the bot go crazy, and twist and turn and do wierd things...and eventually it took a huge chunk out of the hand of one of the guys working on it...

no stiches...but we all learned a lesson that day...

[Anton Abaya]

we have one ninny who keeps screwing up his fingers. last year he stuck it in between the sprockets and chains by accident. this year he somehow managed to wound it with a drill press.

-anton

ps. go ninnies!

[Katie Reynolds]

We had a guy last year that cut his hand machining something or another in our metal shop. He sliced his thumb open pretty deep and probably should've gotten stitches for it.. but of course he didn't. He put duct tape around the cut and kept working until one of the girls on our team saw it bleeding through the tape and made him (at least) wash it out! Yea, it was interesting!

- Katie

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally posted by gniticxe
Such a huge corporation as DuPont needs to watch out for safety a lot, and because we have engineers from DuPont helping us, that motto gets passed along to us.

Dupont is famous for their safety record - I had to take a safety class for my job at NASA, and much of the class had to do with what DuPont had done to make safety a part of the culture in their plant. We're not quite so safe at JSC, but damned if they're not trying .

[dlavery]

At the 2001 Nationals, we were eating dinner after arriving in Orlando on Wednesday evening, when one of the engineers started having severe chest pains radiating down the left arm. We were staying at one of the off-Disney hotels and there was an emergency medicine center right down the street. We got him there - FAST! Then we were introduced to "sunshine medicine."

We came in and said "he is having chest pains and needs to see someone right now!" They said "have a seat, we will get to you in a few minutes."

We said "no, he is having chest pains and difficulty breathing and needs to see someone right now!" They said "we will be with you in a few minutes."

We said "does 'possible heart attack' mean anything to you?" They said "is he having chest pains?"

A moment of stunned silence. Then "yes, that is what we said". To which they responded "we don't handle chest pains here. You have to go to the hospital." "Isn't this an emergency care facility?" "Yes, but we don't handle chest pains."

Rather than argue the point, we asked if they could call an ambulance to take him to the nearest hospital. To which they responded - and here is the kicker - "we don't have an ambulance here, or under contract to come here. The hospital is only about a mile down the street. Your best bet is to just have him walk down there." Apparently, the notion that having a patient with active chest pain take a brisk one-mile stroll to a real medical facility might be a BAD IDEA never occurred to this particular nurse.

Fortunately we were able to get a taxi right outside and get him there quickly. All turned out well and he was OK, just suffering from an acute lung inflamation and a severe case of embarassment. The best part of the whole adventure was when we got to the REAL hospital and the only bed they had open in the emergency room was the one for pediatric cases. We have this great photograph of him lying there in his hospital gown, stretched out on top of a seven foot long, big purple plastic "Barney The Dinosaur" bed!

-dave

[Sean_330]

Wow, thats scary. It sounds like you should have just called
9-1-1 from the restaurant. I hope i dont need any medical care in florida........


Sean
team 330 safety officer (and EMT-D in training so he hates hearing stuff like that)

[AdamT]

Well, as for our team? No. Just a lot of pranks made on our older teachers who're paraniod *and rightfully so*. Making good screams while using a chop saw. Fun stuff like that.

As for your chest pains incident. I'm an EMT-B and have been running rescue for 1 and a half years. Chest pain problems are really weird. They can be caused by so many things. And for the "emergency medical center," medical providers are weird. Unless you see "Emergency Room" or a general hospital, you can't be guarunteed for any help without any stupid politics, a billion forms, and multiple insurance policies. Glad to hear that everything was OK.

[Justin Stiltner]

we had a girl at nats sprain her ankel in disney world and we took her to that same place, and they asked for inshurance forms and all kinds of stuff.. and we ended up having to call her mom and she gave the place her credit card number to get treatment..
I can kinda understand it.. but i think thats a lil overkill when you have your inshurance card.


and as for our injuries thats probally the worst one..
most of them consist of burns, which if you dident know if you burn your finger immedeatly wipe it down the side of your nose. What is happening ehre is that you rub the oil from the skin on your nose onto the burn and it will prevent air from hitting the skin and the pain will go away and you wont evean know you were burned. Trust me it works!!

[RoboGirll]

One of my friend sprained his foot on the last day- at the Nats party... it wasnt THAT bad and we told him to stick with it till we got home. Nothing major at all!