Serious Douglas Crash Injures 7, 1 Airlifted

Douglas, Mass. - A 3 car Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) in the area of 190 Webster Rd sent 7 people to various hospitals Saturday evening, with 1 being transported by helicopter

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At approximately 4:05 p.m. on Saturday, December 9th, 2023, the Douglas Fire Department was dispatched to 190 Webster Rd for a reported MVA. While en route Douglas dispatch advised units there may be multiple injuries on the scene. With only 3 personnel on duty, Douglas's only available ambulance was already en route, Douglas Fire Chief John Furno immediately requested two mutual aid ambulances stating over the radio "If we don't need them, we can always turn them around." A short time later the first due unit, Douglas's Ambulance, arrived on the scene and reported that 3 vehicles were involved, with 1 rolled over and three people entrapped in two of the vehicles.

Chief Furno told Quiet Corner Alerts "Knowing that's a high-speed road and we have a lot of MVAs up there, I knew right off that we would need additional resources. We got a set of Jaws (Jaws of Life or Spreaders) rolling from Webster and in the end, we got another set from Uxbridge [in addition to Douglas's which were en route on the engine operated by call-back personnel] and all three went to work for an hour plus extricating three patients who were trapped." Chief Furno also attributed the ability to rapidly request the mutual aid resources needed to the first arriving fire department Lieutenant's size up.

Seeing the number of injuries on the scene and the complexity of the extrication, a total of 7 Ambulances were requested to the scene, 6 of which were mutual aid ambulances, and two helicopters were requested to the Douglas Fire Department, where the Sutton Fire Department established a landing zone. When asked about declaring a Mass Casualty Incident Chief Furno said "I did think about it, but we were able to get the required resources from mutual aid to the scene fast enough that we never needed to declare one"

With two patients entrapped in a 1-ton work van and another heavily entrapped in a smaller Kia, crews worked for over an hour extricating the patients. Chief Furno told Quit Corner Alerts, "We used every trick in the book with Jaws (spreaders), cutters, SAWZALLs, cribbing [and numerous other specialized extrication tools]." In the end, crews had to cut away so much of one of the vehicles that the seat back was removed and the patient was extricated through the back of the vehicle. 

During the extrication process a Boston Medflight and Umass Memorial LifeFlight helicopter were on the ground ready for a "hot load" (when the helicopter never shuts down keeping the blades at a speed allowing for a rapid takeoff) of critical patients. Once the patients were extricated, they were immediately loaded into ambulances, rabidly evaluated on the scene and then transported via ground to an appropriate hospital or to the landing zone to be transported via the waiting helicopters. During this on-scene evaluation, one patient was able to be downgraded from requiring a helicopter to being stable enough for ground transport, this enabled the helicopter (Umass LifeFlight), which was now extra, to be available to the region instead of being committed with a patient who didn't truly need them. In the end, 2 patients were transported with life-threatening injuries, and 5 others were transported with non-life-threatening injuries.

Chief Furno finished but stating "I just want to say how proud I am of all of the firefighters, police officers, and DPW employees on the scene. We worked hand in hand, and it was a group effort to get the most successful outcome we could."

The Douglas Police and the CEMLEC Accident Rcon are investigating the incident.

Resources involved in the Incident included every member of the Douglas Fire Department (On-Duty and Call-back), Ambulances from Webster EMS x2, Northbridge Fire Department x2, Uxbridge Fire Department x2, Sutton Medstar x2 (1 stood by for any Firefighter injuries), Air Ambulances from Umass LifeFlight and Boston Medflight, and fire apparatus from the Sutton Fire Department, Webster Fire/Rescue, and the Uxbridge Fire Department, Douglas PD, Douglas DPW