On 8th Oct 1952 the worst civilian rail disaster in UK history happened in London. 112 deaths. 340 wounded. That accident, and the actions of one woman from Florida have saved THOUSANDS of lives since. That disaster helped lead to the creation of paramedics. /1 🧵 youtube.com
I won't o go into the mechanics of the crash. For that, my long read is below. At 8am an express train running south slammed full steam into the back of a packed commuter train at Harrow & Wealdstone. The wreckage was then hit by ANOTHER express. /2 londonreconnections.com
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You can see from the picture below just how awful it was. Made worse by old wooden carriages splintering on impact, and carriages crushing up under the bridge, which still bears scars today. But in the midst of the disaster there were some critical pieces of luck. /3
The commuter service was popular with railway workers. Many died. A survivor described the Euston drafting office afterwards as "akin to the Somme". The uninjured railway workers kicked into gear. They checked other lines were secure and began rescue efforts. /4 By pure chance outside the station, the ONLY police motorbike at that point equipped with an experimental radio set had just pulled up. The officer witnessed the accident, and called it in. Officers and ambulances were soon inbound. (The latter would prove an unexpected issue though later) /5 MOST critically, on one train were some US Airforce officers. Realising the unfolding scale of the disaster, they asked the police if they would let them request official support from the USAF hospital at Ruislip. The police agreed. Their superiors at Ruislip instantly accepted the request. /6 The 494th Medical Group was forged in the fires of WW2. The USAF military hospital at Ruislip, where they were based, was brand new, and built to deal with wartime experience. They prepared to receive casualties. /7 They also scrambled 7 doctors and 1 nurse in an ambulance to the scene as as quick response force. Unsure what to take with them, the responders crammed as much as they could into an ambulance - including transfusion supplies. /8 That response team was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Weiderman. Weiderman was a WW2 veteran medic. His doctors and nurse were trained in combat medicine. When they got to Harrow, Weiderman's team realised they needed to treat what was happening like an ongoing combat situation. /9 Because about now it became clear that the early call for ambulances had a hidden cost: the ambulances had arrived TOO QUICKLY. Standard civilian ambulance behaviour at the time was 'scoop and run' But now the serious cases were being pulled out. And the ambulances weren't back yet. /10 So Weiderman's team instantly slipped into combat mode. They did something that had been honed, tried and tested by all the combatant armies in WW2. But was then mostly unheard of in civilian healthcare. They triaged casualties. And they stabilised and treated the worst cases at the scene. /11 Weiderman and his combat docs could treat because they'd had the presence of mind to grab a lot of modern portable kit and supplies when they'd left Ruislip. But their ability to do so also depended on them being able to trust one person: Nursing Lieutenant Abbie Sweetwine. /12 Weiderman established a triage station on one of the platforms. Running that station almost entirely fell on that single nurse: The Floridian Lieutenant Abbie Sweetwine. She triaged cases and helped put in place a system for prioritising ambulance pick-ups as these began to trickle back. /13 It was while doing this that Sweetwine realised another issue was developing: The lack of information reaching hospitals. She created a letter system to indicate priority and prior treatment that was communicated to hospitals. Then she marked it on patients heads with a lipstick she had to hand /14 This meant that hospitals knew, from the lipstick scrawled on patient's heads, whether they'd been stabilised already in some way ('X'), been given morphine ('M') or more. All information the hospitals needed to treat the incoming patients quickly and properly. /15 The actions of the USAF team, and Sweetwine in particular that day, visibly and demonstrably (in the accident reports) saved lives. They proved that in a lot of circumstances, "scoop and run" killed people. You needed ambulances, and people on them, who could also "stay and play." /16 Voices in UK healthcare began pushing for change. They'd seen how ambulances SHOULD be: Triage. Treat. After the Lewisham disaster a few years later - where the contrast with how things had been handled at Harrow was stark those voices became a roar: "Look at HARROW. Copy this. NOW." /17 If you've ever been saved by the prompt actions of the UK ambulance service. If you know anyone who has. Then the path of that life saved traces directly back to the Harrow disaster. To Weiderman, his doctors. and Abbie Sweetwine. And on that note: we're not done here. Not yet. /18 Go back and watch the video of the aftermath I posted at the beginning. At about 1min11sec you'll see Weiderman's team. And you'll see Abbie Sweetwine. Sweetwine wasn't just a Floridian. She was African-American /19
Sweetwine was one of the vanishingly small percentage of black nurses then serving in the USAF. By chance that day the person who VERY VISIBLY saved the lives of a lot of Londoners. The person they, and the papers, came to refer to as the "Angel of Platform Six" was black. /20 By carrying out her duty, and through saving lives at Harrow, Lieutenant Sweetwine put another visible (at the time) crack in the ridiculous notion that somehow her ethnicity made her less capable at her job than others /21 Sweetwine is now mostly forgotten but shouldn't be. She was a pioneer. A hero. She would rise to be a USAF major, serve in Korea and Vietnam, but leave frustration at the discrimination that prevented her climbing higher. Abbie Sweetwine died at 87. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery /END