White Watch

At approximately 03:00 hrs white watch received a call from the ambulance control room requesting their assistance.
The ambulance crews were at an incident involving a young lady impaled on Victorian cast iron railings, in Blackfriars street. With no way of extricating her, 461 and 469 were requested.
On arrival the fire crews were told the female casualty was impaled by two spikes.
One spike went completely through the left foot and the other was embedded into the left thigh.
The casualty, (who had fallen from a first floor window onto the fence) was positioned upside-down with her head and shoulders resting on the ground supporting her body weight, whilst her legs were trapped.
LFF Phil Denton, decided to try using the "cengar" air operated saw to cut through the iron-work as an immediate attack on the railings. However this proved ineffective as did a further attack utilising the "Remscat" power saw.
The decision was made to use the "Holmatro" hydraulic powered cutting gear.
During this process FF's Roy Parrett, Less Price, Keith Darlington and Mel Nicholas supported the casualties body weight, as the ambulance staff monitored her condition.
FF Nick Young, cut the section of railings she was impaled on, from the rest of the fence and thus enabled the casualty to be strapped to the stretcher, railings still attached.
The Fire appliances then followed the Ambulance to the Hereford A & E department where under supervision of the doctor, the crews cut away the remaining spikes.
LFF Phil Denton said, "The difficult thing was, the railings had 'arrow heads' on them, so this caused problems of there own."
Once the arrow head had been removed from the spike that had gone through the left foot, the remaining railing was pulled through the foot by the Doctor.
The other rail had the 'arrow head' embedded in the flesh, so the spike was cut as short as possible to enable surgical removal.