Health and Safety

This is a sad and shocking blog, which raises interesting comparisons between Africa and the UK and the way we deal with risk. 

Today I was having a short rest after lunch in my little semi detached one room bungalow at Marula Lodge, which is beside the Luangwa river and just outside the National Park, when I heard someone deliver a very large load of bricks from a huge dumper truck. Then the noise got louder and I realised that dumper trucks here just aren’t that big. I rushed outside and looked and saw that a large tree had just fallen and demolished the restaurant building. I guessed that there would be multiple casualties and I thought s..t - as this is possibly the worst place in the world outside antarctica to try and deal with such an event. The total sum of medical resources within 5 hours drive being me and a trauma bag with 2 litres of saline and a very small amount of morphine and an ambu bag and mask to help people who are not breathing.  If said casualties are trapped inside an unstable building with a very heavy tree  weighing it down it doesn’ t help. Then I thought maybe there was in fact noone in there - but a moment later it became clear from an impromptu roll call that one guy was missing- and a closer look revealed a still human form. After checking that that part of the building was stable i managed to get in to him. I could see one arm and the back of his chest. There was no breathing, and there was no pulse at the wrist. I had to tell everyone that he was dead and not to try to evacuate him, as it looked impossible and the attempt would be dangerous. It sounds terrible to say it but in a way I was relieved that I would not have to attempt the impossible, and that I had done  something that wasn’t hard but which I was probably the only person who could do with confidence and that was to confirm death. I was also relieved when I saw that he had had a massive blow to the head and chest that no one could have survived. 

The tree is a winter thorn - and after it fell it was clear that it was completely rotten with some sort of fungus at the base with most of it in fact hollow. It had also been dropping a few branches, but on the outside it otherwise looked healthy. People who have lived here for a long time said that they knew that they do sometimes fall over. However, there are lots of them dotted around various tourist lodges! 

The attitude here is that bad things will happen if they are fated to happen, not because we fail to prevent them. In the 3 weeks i have been here the local town (Popn 20,000 roughly) has experienced 1 drowning, 1 man killed by a hippo, 1 death from snake bite, 2 children brought into the clinic dead in the night from some sort of disease, and several aids related deaths. People expect to be killed by elephants, crocodiles, malaria, childbirth, road accidents etc. They do not seem to worry about risks, and do not bother taking precautions against any individual risk - perhaps because of fatalism, perhaps because trying to minimise so many different risks would be a 24 hour job.

 But in this case  I personally would have preferred it if a health and safety guy had visited and condemned the tree a while ago.