“I’m more focused on training, education, and I’m more appreciative of the emotional impact. It’s not the just the crash.”
Mike Nolan was at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon, casually watching planes land as he waited for his friend Pete Carlson to arrive.
Nolan became an eyewitness to the Delta 4819 flight that crash-landed, scarcely believing what his eyes were telling him. The plane smashed onto the snow-covered tarmac, bounced and slid down the runway before bursting into flames and flipping on its back.
“It was surreal,” Nolan said in a telephone interview with Postmedia on Wednesday. “There was a cloud of black smoke. The question is, ‘What the hell is that?’ It’s not a training exercise. This is a carcass of an airplane, and that is black smoke.”
Nolan texted Carlson: “The plane that landed in front of yours just crashed.”
Four minutes later, Carlson responded. “That’s my plane.”
Sporting bald heads and middle-aged goatees, Nolan and Carlson could pass for brothers. For the next several hours, they were indeed brothers in arms, using their training and experience to help in the emergency response.
Nolan, Renfrew County Paramedics chief, is hosting a community paramedics conference in Toronto this week. Carlson, from Minneapolis, was a keynote speaker.
On the plane, Carlson unhooked himself from his seat belt and helped other passengers who were still fastened to their seats, hanging upside down, staring upwards at the floor of the aircraft. He was also part of the crew that helped drag passengers out of the wreckage and onto the tarmac, where the winter wind was howling. When the plane landed, Toronto was experiencing wind gusts of 60 km/h, and the temperature was -8 C.
Evening Update
Meanwhile, Nolan was in contact with the emergency Peel County paramedics team that was rushing to the scene. He relayed as much information as possible, while offering his services to support the incoming paramedics.
The passengers were taken via airport shuttles to a vacant airfield away from the Pearson terminals. Nolan arrived at the same time as the Peel crew and they went to work approximately 15 minutes after the plane had crashed, flipped and stopped.
“The (Canadian Border Services Agency) and the Peel Region paramedics did an extraordinary job, especially with the complexity of it being an international flight,” Nolan said.
He said his own training was invaluable in allowing him to focus on whatever triage or treatment was necessary.
“I’ve been a paramedic for 30 years,” he said. “I’m more focused on training, education, and I’m more appreciative of the emotional impact. It’s not the just the crash. I liken it to the tornadoes in Dunrobin and Calabogie (in 2018). People have that vacant look. They don’t even know they’re hurt, emotionally hurt. Part of it is just being present, working with anything that is different.”
A total of 21 passengers were injured in Monday’s crash, including 19 who were immediately taken to hospital after treatment at the airport. Two more were admitted to hospital later.
As of late Tuesday, two passengers remained in hospital, listed in critical, but not life-threatening condition. There were reports of back sprains, head injuries and nausea due to an aviation fuel leak and the anxiety that Nolan referenced.
He stayed at the airport until about 7 p.m., almost six hours after the crash at 1:15 p.m. Fortunately, he had an ideal support group in place when he was decompressing. The paramedics conference that began Tuesday runs through Thursday.
“The vast majority of the people here get it,” he said. “They can share stories.”
On Tuesday, Carlson, still sporting a cut on his forehead from the accident, spoke at the conference.
“He knocked it out of the park, speaking about helping the homeless with the medical and addiction issues in Minneapolis,” Nolan said.
Some of the passengers who had received the emergency services on Monday also showed up at the conference to offer their thanks.
Looking back at everything, including the crash, the fire and the flipping of the plane, Nolan said he was shocked that the damage hadn’t been more severe.
“It’s a blessing that no one died,” he said. “It still doesn’t compute that more people didn’t suffer severe injuries.”
The Transportation Safety Board pf Canada recovered the black boxes on Tuesday, and officials from the United States National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were also offering support in trying to determine what caused the crash.
Whatever the outcome of the investigation, Nolan had a message for Delta amid the aftermath.
“My hope is the airline fully supports the people and are compassionate to their needs. If they’re not well received now, it’s a long road ahead.”
