Guest taken to hospital after metal object falls off TTD

Well, if the disagreements between supposed medical personnel on this website are any indication, I can see why the scene may have dissolved into something less than ideal.

My hope is the victim makes a full recovery and any needed changes to Cedar Points emergency protocols are made. A nice bonus would be for Top Thrill Dragster to be deemed safe and ready to go opening day 2022.

I guess I find it interesting that CP is being so quiet. Then again especially these days you want to be as close to 100% sure of what you say to the public since the media will twist and turn whatever you say to make a story.

I agree with raptor2 above I just hope the victim makes a speedy recovery and TTD will launch once again! Never want to see anyone get hurt trying to just have fun for a day. Feel bad for the victim for sure, wrong place at the wrong time.

DA20Pilot said:

My girlfriend is a doctor with a major national hospital chain and 20+ years of experience. I asked her to view the EMS bodycam video, and the report Ms. Zinni filed with CP Police and give me her opinion of what transpired.

What is her take on consuming alcohol and then offering medical advice? Because Zinni had posted a video doing shots prior to the involvement. I dunno about you but if I am the victim and my choices are a uniformed EMT/Paramedic or someone claiming to be an NP who might be buzzed....well I think my choice is obvious.

Yikes. I saw the shot video but didn't realize it was from that same day, prior to the chaos.

On the flip side, we all know that drunk pilots are able to do wonderful things. Remember Denzel Washington in Flight?

raptor2 said:

A nice bonus would be for Top Thrill Dragster to be deemed safe and ready to go opening day 2022.

In 18 years has Dragster ever been ready to go on Opening Day?

Just gonna throw a couple things out there...the job of EMS is to get you from the scene to the hospital alive without doing further damage as quickly as possible. Standing around researching and confirming the credentials of bystanders to see if you are going to let them tell you how to do your job instead of contacting your own med control according to protocol would be a time waster and then you have to explain to med control why you listened to the bystander instead of calling med control for guidance with any judgement calls like you're supposed to.

Next, the IV thing. The makeup of the EMS squad determines whether or not you get an IV. Paramedics can give an IV, EMTs cannot give an IV. An EMT can believe that you need one, but that doesn't change the fact that they have not been trained to do so and are not allowed to.

HeyIsntThatRob? said:

Any damage to any of the stationary brake fins on the return side of the track?

What if the magnets under the train picked up a metal object at some point and the object obstructed the brake fin path in between the magnets just enough to get deflected and ricochet off the train?

This all is a terrible freak accident on one of my favorite rides. But my main worry is the guest who was injured by it I hope in the end she is okay and provided whatever care is necessary long term I can’t help but imagine that this is something so random that could happen to anyone of us. Even more, the workers who might have been affected by this incident too Don’t forget them either.

Sucks.

All of you mechanical experts: I want to know your thoughts regarding an interference with a metal object.

MHW said:

HeyIsntThatRob? said:

Any damage to any of the stationary brake fins on the return side of the track?

What if the magnets under the train picked up a metal object at some point and the object obstructed the brake fin path in between the magnets just enough to get deflected and ricochet off the train?

This all is a terrible freak accident on one of my favorite rides. But my main worry is the guest who was injured by it I hope in the end she is okay and provided whatever care is necessary long term I can’t help but imagine that this is something so random that could happen to anyone of us. Even more, the workers who might have been affected by this incident too Don’t forget them either.

Sucks.

All of you mechanical experts: I want to know your thoughts regarding an interference with a metal object.

I hope you're joking and my sarcasm detector is broken.

As an engineer (and definitely not an engineer for Intamin or even a roller coaster engineer of any sorts), I have absolutely no definitive or exclamatory statement I could or would make as a voice of expert opinion on the scenario. There's simply not even enough information known publicly to be making even semi-educated guesses.

Even if I was a senior engineer for Intamin and was 99% certain I know exactly what happened, I wouldn't even consider going online to share my expert opinion publicly on the matter.

If your call for information is not a joke, then I can tell you with certainty that the only thing that can be taken as a matter of fact is, "a small metal object became disengaged from a train on the Top Thrill Dragster roller coaster as it was ending its run." Anything beyond that is a wild ass guess at this point and nobody can or should be speaking as an expert on it any further.

Shane Denmark said:

Steve4Hockey said:

Ouch, seeing cerebral material is not a good sign.

Where did you see that?!?

Found in this link posted a few replies before. https://www.wfmj.com/story/44532804/canfield-nurse-practitioner-hel...l-dragster

Steve4Hockey said:

Shane Denmark said:

Steve4Hockey said:

Ouch, seeing cerebral material is not a good sign.

Where did you see that?!?

Found in this link posted a few replies before. https://www.wfmj.com/story/44532804/canfield-nurse-practitioner-hel...l-dragster

I know that nurse claimed to see "brain matter", but that brought me up short because the ONLY way you're going to see brain matter is if the woman's skull is badly, badly fractured to the point where her brain is spilling out. Yet no other account mentioned brain matter or that the woman had an obviously fractured skull. Plus, she was screaming, which suggests she was conscious and not mentally incapacitated, like you would be if your brain was coming out of your skull. I wonder if the nurse didn't actually see what she thought she saw.

Coco said:

I get that they cannot let bystanders help with treatment, but the NP was also trying to point out that they were seriously lacking basic proper patient transport and care with a head injury. I also understand that the queue lines definitely made things difficult, but the victim was haphazardly dragged onto the gurney without as much as a neck brace. I know they wanted to get her out of there due to the seriousness of her injury, which is why they should have been prepared with basic equipment. I hope CP really looks into their emergency response procedures and ensures basic life saving/serious injury materials are always accessible for their EMS crew. I'm not asking them for a whole emergency room, but they could have at least had something as simple as a neck stablizer. They also need training and practice on how to safely remove an injured victim from a queue and if it's not possible for a certain ride, the queue needs to be adjusted.

I wish they would address measures they are taking to help ensure their EMS team is prepared in the event of future emergencies, but I don't expect to see anything of the sort.

I can't stop imagining what their response could look like if a larger emergency took place with multiple victims. Thank goodness it hasn't yet!

This is a pretty good take. Certainly they didn't have everything they needed on hand. That said, there are a lot of decisions to be made on the fly in a situation like this that receive attention based on hierarchy of need and we don't have enough details to criticize. If someones skull is cracked open and they are bleeding out in front of you, that has to be addressed ahead of any paralysis concerns. If you think you need to have her to the hospital right now or she dies, you do the very best you can with what you've got and you go.

Very possible, but exposed brain means nothing to consciousness. People have "open skull" brain surgery and are often awake for the procedure for various reasons.

djDaemon said:

Kevinj said:

I also cant imagine what from Iron Dragon could fall to cause such serious damage. That ride is not that close to the queue of TTD, especially considering the modest speeds it is travelling.

While I agree that the statement from the park sure seems to convey that they're certain where the object came from, ID's helix prior to the second lift is approximately 27 feet from the nearest edge of a TTD queue canopy, so the bottom of an ID train would be around, what, 20 feet away? And even at relatively low speed, a sufficiently heavy object such as the one pictured above could do a ton of damage.

But again, that the park's message was so specific makes it pretty clear to me that the object in question came from the train. And it may have been mentioned already, but the object that struck the guest may not be what was pictured above - it is possible the pictured object became dislodged from the track, causing the actual offending object to become dislodged from the train. The two objects wouldn't necessarily have the same flight path.

Its very clear which ride is closed and which ride is not. No other analysis needed on this theory, we can let it die.

99er said:

What is her take on consuming alcohol and then offering medical advice? Because Zinni had posted a video doing shots prior to the involvement.

Very legitimate question, and a tough one to answer.

We cannot really tell how much alcohol she drank and how long it was before the TTD incident. She didn't appear inebriated in the bodycam video, but she may have been under the influence.

Ask yourself this:

a) If you were a qualified healthcare professional and you witnessed someone suffer a severe injury, and if the treatment thereof was within the scope of your expertise, and you saw that, in your estimation, the victim wasn't receiving appropriate or adequate care, and you had recently had a couple of drinks but you weren't inebriated, would you offer assistance to or advocate for the victim?

b) If you suffered a severe injury with brain matter exposed, and the first responders on-site had maybe six months of training, weren't well equipped or prepared to tend to your injury, and there was a much more qualified healthcare practitioner with ER experience on-scene attempting to ensure that the less-qualified responders were properly tending to your traumatic head injury, would you want that experienced professional to tend to you or advocate for you despite having had a couple of drinks?

I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer without knowing to what extent, if any, she was impaired.

Speaking for myself, I would render the assistance if I felt I wasn't impaired, even if I were feeling mild effects of alcohol.

If I were in the victim's position, it's a tough call. Would I want a person under the influence directly tending to my exposed brain, for example? Probably not, unless it was necessary and there weren't any better options. Would I mind if a qualified healthcare professional intervened verbally to correct improper care being administered to me if he/she were mildly under the influence? I probably wouldn't mind that at all.

MHW said:

All of you mechanical experts: I want to know your thoughts regarding an interference with a metal object.

I mean yeah... I go around calling myself a mechanical expert, too. I'm impressed with your ability to read between the lines.

Steve4Hockey said:

Very possible, but exposed brain means nothing to consciousness. People have "open skull" brain surgery and are often awake for the procedure for various reasons.

Yep. My husband has had conversations with people who had brain matter visible. Not very long conversations because they didn't stay conscious all the way to the hospital but you can be conscious with your brain hanging wide open.

DA20Pilot said:.

I am simply relaying the opinion of a very highly qualified professional who is well known to me personally.

What was her take on this article and the comments on it?

MichaelB- stop quoting lengthy posts directly above yours. You can get in trouble around here for that.
Friendly reminder.

News agencies continue to press the issue

The claim is that the Cedar Point police department is sitting on documents, and that because they are a subset of the Sandusky Police Department, records are subject to public records law.

Of course, the article starts with:

Cedar Point officials have offered little details about how the metal object fell from the ride - details that we believe the public has the right to know.

I don't think it's hard to accept the idea that the park may not know the how. I think it's very likely they know the what, and they have said as much and did so fairly quickly.

Is it just some macabre desire to know the extent of injuries to the victim? No one has a right to know her name or the extent of what her and her family are having to deal with.

Help me here with what exactly there is to know beyond what we already know.

To be fair, I do think the public has the right to know how this all happened once that is figured out, but it's been about 123 hours since it all happened.

Hi Walt,

I hadn't provided the midlevel.wtf article to her, though I had read it, and I summarized to her the general gist of these comments. She is not from Ohio and thus is unfamiliar with Ohio code, and she had not directly read the article.

But I did ask her if she thought the NP acted inappropriately or exceeded her bounds or recommended any incorrect treatments. I also asked her if she thought the NP was wrong to state that she had a "medical degree."

Her opinion was no. She thought, from what she could see in the video and read in her CP report that she acted appropriately, and that her recommendations were likely good calls.

I can tell you my opinion of the article.

I think the writer attacked the NP unjustly, and I think that his quote from Ohio Revised Code Section 2909.04 was not applicable, and in both of our opinions she did not:

"Substantially impair[s] the ability of law enforcement officers, firefighters, rescue personnel, emergency medical services personnel, or emergency facility personnel to respond to an emergency or to protect and preserve any person or property from serious physical harm"

And in my opinion she didn't violate Section 4731.41 "Practicing medicine without license or certification." I'm not a lawyer, but if I were a juror I wouldn't convict.

Nor did she "falsely advertise yourself to the public that you are a physician." She never claimed to be a physician, she claimed to have a medical degree (NOT a doctorate of medicine degree) and in my opinion if she has a degree that enabled her to obtain Nurse Practitioner certification, which enables her to practice medicine to a limited degree, then her statement was accurate. Her degree, in part, qualified her for a job in which she can practice limited medicine. In the context of not being listened to and summarily dismissed, I think her statement was reasonable. Yes, she was a little elevated in her tone, but that is understandable in the urgency and adrenaline of the situation.

Now I will grant you this- the excerpts from the State of Ohio Emergency Medical Responder Guidelines do seem to substantiate that EMS personnel were justified in declining Ms. Zinni's offer to assist. At the very least, it could be reasonably argued that they followed published "guidelines" by doing do.

That said, there is no guideline in the SOEMR document pertaining to good samaritan Nurse Practitioners, only to Physicians (which I interpret to mean MD or DO) and EMTs.

I would also say that if NP Zinni witnessed care that she knew or believed to be inadequate or inappropriate based on her knowledge and education as an NP with ER experience, she had moral justification to speak up assertively in my opinion.

I still think it was very rude and unprofessional for them to tell her to "Shut up and go away!"

And, even if EMS did follow published guidelines by declining her offer to assist, I still think the lack of preparedness (no c-collar, no board) is a big problem for an EMS team in an environment such as a major amusement park.

And I think it is also valid criticism to say that their struggles getting the gurney through the queue to the victim indicates a notable training deficiency- this should be well rehearsed and they should know exactly how to maneuver the gurney in and the patient out without hindrance or delay.

I do agree with the posters who said they needed to get the patient to the hospital ASAP and had to do the best they could with the tools they had on-hand.

Respectfully,

Jason