CRITICAL MOMENT MET

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 40, 17 February 1931, Page 8

CRITICAL MOMENT MET

Read in terms of its environment, the story of hospital work at Hastings, told by Dr. C. R. Wright and telegraphed by the Press Association, is one of the epics of the earthquake. An appreciation of the environment requires that one should know (or should imagine, if he was not there) that the immediate after-effects of the Tuesday's crash was to produce in many people a sort of mental 'sluggishness, almost a coma. The outward sign of this condition — which it was hard to resist —was a I tendency to wander round and to do nothing in particular. The immediate sequel to the convulsion at 11 minutes to 11 a.m. was a sort of daze, which, if it was negative to hysteria, was also a handicap on useful effort. After about twenty-four hours this shock condition wore off; and, as people roused themselves, they began to feel the unnerving effects of the tremors and after-shocks, and a new kind of self-control was needed. It is therefore evident that any lifesaving or reconstructional work carried out either in the Tuesday conditions, or in the Wednesday (and afterwards) conditions, represented no mean accomplishment on the part of the workers and of their leaders.

There was required first of all a stimulus to shake off the mental chloroform of the first situation; after that, steadiness and self-control to meet the succeeding situations that developed when nerves had again become raw.

Considering these things, the record of the Hastings Emergency Hospital speaks for itself.

Within two houra of the earthquake every cot case lying on Royston Hospital lawn had been transferred to the racecourse complete with bed and bedding.

Almost at the same time the operations started, and it is almost unbelievable that the Tuesday in Hastings saw 66 operations performed. And these, thanks to the resources available, and to the control thereof, were performed in no rough and ready manner. On the other hand— eaeli case had full surgical anaesthesia, and in not one of these cases was anything except storile dressings used.

In addition to the 66 operations performed between 1.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the Tuesday, "an urgent major abdominal operation was performed, and again sterile dressings and instruments were available." If this is not evidence of human nerve and brain rising above the shock of an apparently crumbling world, what is? Side hy side with the cool skill and "instantly ready" organisation of these doctors and nurses is the "standby courage" of the men in the power-house, who, as we noted in our reports of the earthquake, had t*-- work in a big shaken building through the continuous succession of ft/tcr-shocks. They were doing preventively for the health and welfare of the community what the doctors and nurses were doing operationally for the wounded. The earthquake should supply some bright paragraphs in this year's annual report of the Department of Public Health.