Emergency Response
Of the 31 people who died at the scene, 28 had been hit by shrapnel in the form of airplane parts, concertina wire and debris from items on the ground. Sixteen of the fatalities occurred in the days and weeks after the disaster due to severe burns, the last being the burned and injured helicopter pilot.
About 500 people had to seek hospital treatment following the event.
The disaster revealed serious shortcomings in the handling of large-scale medical emergencies by German civil and American military authorities. US military personnel did not immediately allow German ambulances onto the base, and the rescue work was generally hampered by a lack of efficiency and coordination. The rescue coordination center in Kaiserslautern was unaware of the disaster's scale as much as an hour after it occurred, even though several German Medevac helicopters and ambulances had already arrived on site and left with patients. American helicopters and ambulances provided the quickest and largest means of evacuating burn victims, but did not have sufficient capacities for treating them, or had difficulty finding them. Further confusion was added by the American military using different standards for intravenous catheters from German paramedics. (A single standard was codified in 1995).
Over 600 people reported to the clinic that afternoon to donate blood.
A crisis counseling center was immediately established at the nearby Southside Base Chapel and remained open through the week. Base mental health professionals provided group and individual counseling in the weeks following, and surveyed the response workers two months following the tragedy and again six months after the disaster to gauge recovery.
Read more about this topic: Ramstein Air Show Disaster
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