[Update] Motorcyclist Injured on Remote Area of Usal Road; Air Ambulance Called
A motorcyclist was injured Thursday afternoon on Usal Road, prompting a multi-agency emergency response that included two air ambulances dispatched to the remote Southern Humboldt area.
The Mendocino County Emergency Communications Center received a report of the crash around 4:15 p.m. The injured rider was being transported by another motorcyclist to meet first responders at the intersection of Usal Road and Briceland Road, a response method often called a rolling medical.
Whale Gulch Volunteer Fire Department and City Ambulance were requested to respond. Two air ambulances were also on order: Reach 5 accepted with an estimated arrival of 4:54 p.m., though later cancelled, with Reach 18 responding with a quicker arrival time. Cal Fire Helicopter 604 indicated it would be on scene by 4:50 p.m. Whitethorn Fire was asked to provide mutual aid.
Contact with the injured motorcyclist was made at 4:39 p.m. at Four Corners, where an incident commander assessed the woman. She was experiencing pain in her right ankle. The woman was 42 years old.
Whitethorn Fire was then directed to proceed to a nearby airport to establish a landing zone, while all other resources were asked to continue responding.
The cause of the crash was not immediately available.
Information is from scanner traffic and may be incomplete or subject to change. This article will be updated as more details become available.
Update 5:43 p.m.: According to scanner traffic, the patient has been transported by the scene via air ambulance.
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Meatchalk down!
I note Usal Road is in the vicinity of Jackass Ridge. This idiot jackass sucked medical resources from those more deserving. Good thing there wasn’t a need for those resources at that time.
I meant to conclude by stating:
Good thing there wasn’t a need for those resources by someone more deserving at that time. Ride in control.
Using an air ambulance for an injured ankle does seem a bit excesivce.
Probably important to remember the possibility of internal bleeding here. Not easy for one of us to give her a proper medical assessment via the comment section.
Usal road travels a long way from SoHum to highway one, and Jackass ridge is just one part of it. There was a town called Moody out there, and you seem moody.
Thing is, a motorcycle wreck in a remote area is serious. If somehow you knew it was not serious, you should have radioed in from Arcata and canceled all resources.
For reals though, how it works is you keep everything coming you might need until you get confirmation on the ground. Usal road may not be passable by ground ambulance. The patient may have a chief complaint of a broken ankle, but who knows, perhaps a head injury not recognized, or a back or spine injury. Sure, sometimes in hindsight, we can say “no biggie”, but Fire and Medical folks haven’t yet developed a crystal ball that reads the future.
It also sounds like a lot of the problem was created by the way people and resources were dispatched. The motorcyclist was able to be brought to 4 corners in the gulch by her riding companion. If there hadn’t been so much confusion this would have been a simple ambulance ride to the ER from 4 corners. With only the closest department being paged out to assist, Whale Gulch.
IYKYK Charlie. I agree with you, all the years we lived there without even phone services. Might have had to meet the ambulence in ‘old’ Whitethorn even.
Thank you. Empathy is a positive human response
you know, with a broken ankle back in the day we’d practically drive ourselves to town, or hitchhike if we had to. And that’s our neighborhood = Four Corners, Whale Gulch. Wasn’t even phone services then, we got CB radios about 1972 -73. And then we were talking to the fisher folk out of Shelter Cove.
My husband and I passed a large group of motorcycles on chemise road headed into the sinkyone on sunday. All driving super fast, half of them in our lane, blind corners. We flagged them down and told them to be more careful, my exact words were “youre an awful long way from a hospital out here!”
Thank you for doing that! I drive that road maybe once a year and I’d hate to slam into somebody on their bike. It’s very rugged, beautiful country and it feels like you’re all alone for miles- until you’re not! Those corners are very blind and an accident out that far is no joke…