Crisis pulled two teams together

"Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed."

— William James, 1906

In the darkest hour, even the smallest points of light shine brightly.

Six weeks after a horrific bus crash on I-75 claimed the lives of five members of the Bluffton University baseball team, the bus driver and his wife, university President James Harder visited Atlanta to thank the city.

"We are profoundly grateful. There are not enough words," he said during a news conference at Grady Memorial Hospital on April 16.

In the weeks after the crash, there "have been many points of light," Harder added.

Touched by the plight of young men who were far from home and faced serious trauma, Atlanta rallied around the team with gestures big and small. Executives at AirTran Airways and Delta Air Lines arranged for free flights to Atlanta for family members. Holiday Inn Express provided lodging. Local chaplains came to Grady to pray with and counsel the players. Members of the Buckhead Baseball League brought clothing, sneakers and food, not only the day of the accident, but until the last player left the hospital six weeks later.

"Soon after the crash, some Georgia State [University] students showed up with sacks of sausage biscuits for the team," said Denise Simpson, director of public relations for Grady Health System. "They didn't want any credit — just to do something."

Atlanta's first response, however, came from teams of emergency and health care professionals, who knew that every second was critical. It took eight minutes from the first 911 call until the first patients left in ambulances for local hospitals: Grady Memorial Hospital and Atlanta Medical Center — both Level 1 trauma centers — and Piedmont Hospital.

Atlanta's police, fire and emergency service personnel are accustomed to working together and moving fast, but that day "everyone was really functioning as a team," said Tony Trimble, EMT-P, RN, with Grady Health System, who was one of the first on the scene of the accident. Teamwork also was evident among the doctors, nurses and emergency staff members at Grady, who cared for the physical and emotional needs of the players.

A paramedic and a nurse in the surgical intensive care unit, Trimble described the different roles.

"As a paramedic, you are concerned with the here and now — what does the patient need immediately?" he said. "Nurses are more concerned with a patient's future and healing. In surgical ICU, you work with patients who are right on the edge of recovery, and your job is to move them forward. You get to know them and their families."

Nurses and doctors formed bonds with the Bluffton team and still keep in touch. Grady trauma surgeon Jeffrey Salomone, who treated 17 of the 19 injured players, was so impressed by the courage, leadership and gratitude of the young men that he later traveled to Bluffton, Ohio, to watch the team play.

"I wanted to get out there and support them," he said. "They touched our hearts."

Atlanta touched their hearts as well. Many players and their family members commented that, if the accident had to happen, they were lucky to be in Atlanta and in the hands of a highly trained and caring team of emergency and health care professionals. This month, Pulse shows you how that team supported the Bluffton team.

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