VEHICLE INCIDENT IN REMOTE COUNTRY: ROLLOVER, CRUSH AND RECOVERY INJURY

The Technique

1. Secure the scene before you treat anyone, because remote means nobody else is coming to do it. Stop your vehicle where it protects the scene rather than adds to it, well back and angled to shield the working area, with hazard lights on and someone posted up track and down track to warn approaching traffic on blind corners and crests. Handbrake on, wheels chocked, and think about slope: a vehicle above you on a steep track is a hazard, and so is your own. Turn the crashed vehicle's ignition off and disconnect or isolate the battery if you can reach it safely. Note the time, note your exact position, and take a photograph of the scene and the surroundings, because you will need to describe where you are precisely and stress destroys memory. Then count your people, including yours and theirs, and put someone in charge of the group who is not doing hands on treatment.
2. Stabilise the vehicle before anyone goes in. After a rollover, a vehicle sitting on its side or roof is balanced, not settled, and it will move when someone climbs in or when a body shifts inside. Build it a base with logs, rocks, spare tyres or purpose made blocks packed under the strongest parts of the body, working from outside the vehicle and never putting an arm or head under an unsupported edge. Do not use a jack as a support. If the vehicle is on a slope, chock and anchor before you touch anything. Only once it is stable should someone enter, and preferably through the largest, safest opening rather than through crushed glass. Everyone else stays out. Broken laminated glass, torn metal and loaded suspension components all cut, so gloves and eye protection go on before hands go in.
3. Assess occupants in the order that matters, and account for everyone. Work DRSABCD on each person: Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR, Defibrillation. Start with the quiet ones, because the person screaming has an airway and the person silent may not. In a rollover expect head injury, neck and back pain, chest injury from the belt, shoulder and collarbone injury, and internal bleeding that shows itself slowly as a pale, cold, thirsty, breathless casualty who deteriorates over the next hour. Count occupants and keep counting: ask the driver and each passenger how many people were in the vehicle, and then search a wide area around it including under it and in scrub downhill, because unrestrained occupants get thrown well clear and are easy to miss in long grass at dusk. Leave conscious, restrained occupants in position where you safely can, keep them still, and treat rather than rush to extract.
4. Understand that a trapped casualty is a specialist problem, and know the one thing you must not get wrong. If someone is pinned under or in a vehicle, releasing the crushing force is time critical, and Australian guidance is to release it as soon as possible regardless of how long they have been trapped. Do not leave a person crushed on the theory that releasing them is more dangerous, because that is a misunderstanding that costs lives. Free them as quickly as you safely can with the people and gear you have, using cribbing packed under the load as you lift so nothing drops back. After release, expect them to get worse rather than better: keep them lying still, keep them warm, watch their breathing and level of response closely, give nothing to eat or drink, and get emergency help moving urgently, because a casualty who has been crushed for a long period needs hospital care fast. Do not apply a tourniquet just because someone was crushed. Tourniquets are for life threatening bleeding, as covered in the trauma bleeds and breaks lesson. If you truly cannot free them, protect their airway, insulate and shelter them, stay with them, and put your effort into raising help.
5. Prevent recovery gear failures, because they cause some of the worst injuries in this sport and there is no first aid answer to them. When a snatch strap, shackle or recovery point lets go, a heavy steel object travels at enormous speed through the space where people stand, and the resulting head and chest injuries are frequently unsurvivable no matter who is on scene. So the entire lesson here is prevention. Use rated recovery points that are engineered and bolted for the purpose, never a tow ball and never a tie down eye. Use rated shackles or soft shackles, and never join two straps with a steel shackle, which turns the join into a projectile. Lay a proper damper, or something heavy like a recovery bag or folded blanket, over the middle of every strap and every winch cable under load. Set an exclusion zone at least one and a half times the length of the strap in every direction from both vehicles, get every spectator, child, dog and camera operator outside it, and confirm it out loud before anyone takes up tension. Inspect gear before each use and retire anything cut, frayed, sun damaged or shock loaded. Dig and reduce the load before you snatch. Nobody stands beside a winch cable, nobody steps over it, and gloves stay on.
6. Treat fuel and fire as a live risk for the whole time you are on scene. A rolled vehicle leaks. Petrol vapour travels and ignites easily, diesel is less volatile but soaks clothing and burns readily once alight, and a hot exhaust or turbo sits at ignition temperature for a long time after the engine stops. Isolate the battery, keep every ignition source away, and that includes cigarettes, camp stoves, angle grinders and the second vehicle idling nearby. Get your extinguisher out and put it in someone's hands before you need it rather than after. If fuel has soaked a casualty's clothing, get that clothing off them once they are somewhere you can manage it. If a vehicle is burning, your only job is distance: move everyone well back, upwind, and out of the line of tyres and struts, which fail violently in fire. A vehicle is replaceable and there is no version of this where you fight an established fire in the bush with a hand held unit.
7. Never work under a vehicle that is only held up by a jack. Recovery in remote country often means changing a tyre or clearing a driveline on soft, sloping ground, and that is exactly where vehicles fall. Chock the wheels that stay on the ground, on both sides, before you lift. Put a solid base plate under the jack on soft or sandy ground. Once lifted, put rated stands or solid cribbing under the chassis and lower onto them, and put the removed wheel under the vehicle as a last line of defence. Then and only then does anyone reach under, and even then no head or torso goes under a load. High lift jacks deserve their own respect: they are tall, unstable, and the handle swings with real force, so keep your face and body out of the arc, keep a firm hand on the handle at all times, and use them for lifting rather than as a support. If you are alone and unsure, wait for the second vehicle rather than improvising.
8. Choose the transport and evacuation option deliberately, then commit to it. Moving a casualty by vehicle over rough ground hurts and can worsen an injury, so decide whether the journey is genuinely better than waiting. If you drive them out, secure them properly in the position they can best tolerate, put a person alongside them whose only job is to watch breathing and level of response, drop tyre pressures to soften the ride, and drive to the casualty rather than to the clock, stopping to reassess at regular intervals. With no phone coverage, the vehicle is usually your best asset: it is shelter, water, signal and a large visible object that searchers can find, so staying with it is nearly always right. Use a satellite messenger or a registered personal locator beacon, and activate it early rather than after things get worse, since help takes many hours to arrive in remote country. UHF channel five is the designated emergency calling channel and worth trying, particularly near repeaters and near other traffic. Do not send someone walking out except as a last resort, and never alone. Before you call, write down what you will say: location and coordinates, what happened, how many are hurt, what their injuries and condition are, the terrain and access for a vehicle or aircraft, and your vehicle description and colour. The emergency comms and evacuation lesson covers the call itself in detail.

Common Mistakes

Climbing into a rolled vehicle before it is stabilised. Fix: crib and chock it from outside first, then enter through the safest opening.

• Assuming everyone is accounted for because the seats are full. Fix: ask each occupant how many were aboard and search a wide area, including under the vehicle, before you stand down.
• Leaving a crushed casualty pinned because you have heard that releasing them is dangerous. Fix: release the crushing force as soon as you safely can, then watch them closely and get help moving urgently.
• Snatching off a tow ball or joining straps with a steel shackle. Fix: rated recovery points only, and a soft shackle or purpose made joiner where a join is unavoidable.
• Letting people film a recovery from close range. Fix: exclusion zone of at least one and a half strap lengths in every direction, confirmed out loud, camera included.
• Waiting to see if things improve before activating the beacon. Fix: activate early, because help measured in hours needs a head start.

The Drill

Stage a rolled vehicle scenario at camp with a volunteer belted in and a second volunteer thrown clear into scrub twenty metres away. The group must secure and protect the scene, isolate the battery, crib the vehicle, find both casualties, and produce a written emergency call script with coordinates. Then run a separate recovery brief on a real snatch setup with no vehicle moving: rated points identified, damper placed, exclusion zone paced out and everyone moved outside it. Standard: second casualty located within five minutes, vehicle cribbed before anyone enters, and the call script complete with coordinates, injuries and access description inside ten minutes.

← Full 4wd expeditions curriculum