A Little Off the Top: A New Year's resolution you can really use

By Ethan Smith

It was your typical overcast winter day driving through Butte on my way to Big Sky last month, with icy roads and intermittent snow — pretty much your standard Montana driving conditions.

Most of us were taking it slow and steady on I-90 eastbound, right near the I-15 interchange, when a nearby BMW started to fishtail. The driver attempted to regain control, overcorrected, and slammed into the guardrail at about 50 mph — all of which I witnessed in my rearview mirror.

The driver hit the guardrail head-on, crumpling the hood, while the car remained broadside to oncoming traffic. A Ford pickup just barely missed the BMW, and then pulled off onto the shoulder where I had stopped.

Meanwhile, I dialed 911, gave the location of the accident to the Highway Patrol, and then walked back to make sure the driver was OK. Fortunately, the combination of a seatbelt and airbag spared her from any injury, and other than being a little shook up, she was OK.

I waited until the Highway Patrol officer got there, handed out my contact info, and arrived at Big Sky a couple hours later.

I returned home a few days later on the same route, driving I-90 westbound in much the same conditions, when an SUV began to fishtail in front of me and overcorrected.

The SUV did a 180, and the outside wheels caught the two-foot pile of snow at the edge of the shoulder. The truck did a half flip, landing upside down in the snow about 15 feet from the edge of the road.

I was the only person around.

For the second time in 72 hours, I dialed 911, told them my location, and asked them to have an ambulance on standby once I had a chance to check for injuries.

After pulling safely off the road, I approached the truck and started walking around it, trying to figure out if I should kick a window in if the doors were locked. All of the windows were tinted, so I had no idea what was taking place inside, how many people were there, or what I would find.

Fortunately, the doors were unlocked, and I opened the back passenger door just about the time a man was crawling out of the sliding rear window in the back door.

“Are you OK?” I asked the driver, who was suspended upside down because she was wearing her seatbelt.

Fortunately, she and her husband — who had not been wearing his seatbelt — were fine. Again, a little shaken from their ordeal, but OK. Things could have been a lot worse.

I called the Highway Patrol again and told them no ambulance was necessary, and shortly thereafter a patrolman showed up.

The couple, who lived nearby in Whitehall, thanked me for stopping and then went and sat in the back of the warm patrol car while I gave the officer my version of events and contact info.

I then got back into my vehicle and drove home, wondering what the odds were of witnessing two rather significant accidents within 10 miles of each other in a 72-hour period, on the same highway.

Given that it’s winter time in Montana, a part of me wasn’t surprised. I was glad that nobody was seriously injured, but I also felt confident in my ability to help, had there been injuries.

It wasn’t always like that.

When I was about 11 years old, some friends and I were at summer camp, and we were late for our next activity. We trotted out of our cabin, only to find one of our fellow campers walking around in a circle, in complete shock, his forearm covered in blood.

His thumb was lying on top of a tetherball about 20 feet away. He had shimmied up the pole to untie the ball, and, not knowing the nylon cord had wrapped around his thumb, he dropped to the ground, severing his thumb.

There were three of us, and no adults around, because they were already at the scheduled activities (where we should have been). Let me tell you, being 11 years old and trying to assess an emergency situation with no adults around is one of the worst feelings in the world.

Fortunately, one of the campers with me was an Eagle Scout, and he was trained in first aid. We got the kid down on the ground and covered him with a blanket from a nearby clothesline. The Eagle Scout retrieved the thumb from the top of the tetherball, and washed it off. Meanwhile, I was doing my best to talk to the kid — I don’t remember exactly what I said — but we managed to get the thumb cleaned up and ready when a camp counselor showed up with a first aid kit to take over.

The kid had his thumb sewed on at Baltimore’s shock/trauma unit, and regained most of the use it within a month. The credit for that goes to the Eagle Scout who knew what to do.

After that, I made up my mind that I never wanted to go through that feeling of helplessness again. I signed up for the Red Cross first aid and lifeguard training on my 16th birthday, and was certified in both within a couple months.

Over the past two years, I’ve helped two heart attack victims, both of whom collapsed in a restaurant where I happened to be eating. Neither one of them needed CPR, but I was there to help until the ambulance arrived. I didn’t do anything heroic or out of the ordinary, but I did know what to do to handle the situation.

The moral of the story? If you’ve already broken those New Year’s resolutions, try one that will last a lifetime and maybe make a difference. Contact your local fire department or ambulance service and see when they offer their next first aid or CPR class, and sign up.

Watching someone suffer without being able to render aid until more qualified people arrive is a terrible feeling, at least for me. We live in a world where people often have a “It’s not my problem” mentality, and it often shows during emergency situations.

Don’t be one of those people. You never know when you will be driving along and witness a terrible accident, or eating in a restaurant and have the person at the next table collapse. Trust me, it happens all the time, everyday, somewhere in this state.

Are you going to be ready to help?