Paramedic shocked after visiting tsunami-struck Samoa

ALAN DOVE

HELP AT HAND: Auckland doctor Glen Twentyman and Fiona Vickers treat a Samoan woman.

ANDREW GORRIE/Dominion Post

VOLUNTEER RETURNS: Fiona Vickers is back in Wellington after a harrowing stint helping out in Samoa.

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Paramedic Fiona Vickers thought she was unshockable – until she found herself on the first aid front-line in tsunami-struck Samoa.

"There were things there that I wish I'd never seen," the Wellington Free Ambulance service manager said.

A paramedic with more than eight years' experience, Miss Vickers, 39, decided to lend her expertise after seeing footage of the disaster.

"I saw the tsunami on TV and felt really compelled that I had to go there."

Rather than waiting for a callup, she arranged to travel there with staff from the Family Centre, a Lower Hutt-based community aid agency.

On her arrival there just three days after the tsunami hit, she was confronted with hundreds of survivors in urgent need of treatment – often for severe injuries.

"They're some of the most horrific wounds I've seen," she said. "A lot of them were going to be losing limbs."

Finding everyone who needed help was sometimes challenging because of the locals' fears of another tsunami.

"There were people who wouldn't even come down for treatment – you'd have to go up into the hills to find them."

Despite first-aid workers' best efforts, scarce medical equipment added to the injury and death toll, she said.

A baby who was not breathing very well was taken to hospital to try to save it, but doctors discovered that the ventilator they needed to use did not work. "There was nothing they could do – they just had to stand there and watch it die."

The tsunami had shown how insufficient the healthcare usually available in Samoa was, Miss Vickers said.

She hoped that would lead to increased medical aid from New Zealand and other countries in the wider Pacific region.

"It will hopefully make a difference to the Samoan people."