November 18, 2013
This article is part of a series on Alaska Tour Bus Accidents. Following is a list of the other currently available articles:
Alaska Tour Bus Accidents – Shattered Dreams and Worse!
Working on a tourist injury case, it’s important to understand how these happen before we dive into how the law takes care of the victims. This article talks about the inherent dangers in Alaska Tour Buses and some of the logistic nightmares associated with these tragic events.
Tour Accident Injuries
When a tour bus leaves the road, whether at a high rate of speed or by simply rolling down an embankment because the road shoulder caved off under the stopped bus, significant injuries to the occupants invariably occur. The typical tour bus is not equipped with seatbelts or shoulder harnesses for the passengers; this is not required by law. Consequently, bus passengers are tumbled out of their seats and bounce around the inside of the bus like pebbles in a soda can rolled down the sidewalk. Unsecured objects like laptop computers, personal bags and service equipment become flying projectiles striking tumbling passengers and contributing to the injuries occurring during the chaos of a tour bus crash. Severe injuries, from brain injury and other head trauma, quadriplegia, broken bones, torn muscles and sometimes death, are common in a tour bus accident. All of the basic elements for significant traumatic injuries are present, and when a tour bus filled with passengers leaves the road, those elements coalesce to result in severe injury and/or death. This scenario has occurred in Alaska too many times.
Rescue From the Crash Site
Alaska has a limited number of well-equipped modern medical centers where major trauma injuries can be treated. The existing medical centers are located in Fairbanks and Anchorage, and can be a great distance from accident sites. Because of Alaska’s great distances and limited road system, the safe and efficient transporting of accident victims to life-saving healthcare facilities from remote tour bus accident crash sites is always a challenge. Fixed wing air ambulances flown by Bush pilots can transport passengers on stretchers, but only if there is a straight section of road which the pilot can use as a temporary landing site. Otherwise, rescue efforts are performed by helicopter ambulances. Some of these medevac rescue helicopters are operated by private ambulance services and others are through the Alaska National Guard, United States Army or the United States Coast Guard. Fortunately, Alaska has some of the finest medevac crews in the world available to rescue injured tourists.
Medical treatment
Once an injured tourist’s injuries have been stabilized and they had been transported to one of the major hospitals in Anchorage or Fairbanks, they are in relatively good hands from a medical standpoint. However, sometimes seriously injured tourists have to be medevaced to a trauma center in Seattle to receive specialized life-saving care. More frequently, injured tour bus passengers will be hospitalized in Alaska until their medical condition is stabilized and then discharged home or to another medical facility. This may take a few days or weeks.
When the injured tourist is discharged from the hospital to return home on a commercial airline flight, changing the flight reservations usually is a logistic challenge. When the injured tourist is discharged to medical facility near their home, they have to be transported to that facility with an attending nurse. This has its own set of logistic problems.
It is common for family members to come to Alaska to provide moral support to a hospitalized tourist and to help direct how the patient’s medical care will be handled while the recuperation is occurring. Though the moral support is always welcome, the need to have a family member drop everything and travel to Alaska to help, creates its own set of financial and personal stresses for the injured person. Still, having an able-bodied family member available to assist with the logistics of getting an injured person discharged from hospital and transferred home is almost always a huge benefit.
What About The Bills?
Once the injured person arrives home, they have to figure out how to deal with bills which they have incurred because of the accident and which they will incur in the future. Depending on the injured tourist’s level of continuing disability, the task of dealing with the bills will be handled by the injured person or a family member who is impressed into service. This is where my experience as a bus accident attorney usually enters the picture, though it would be very beneficial if I was contacted immediately after the accident.
Helping injured tourists or their family members understand their payment obligations for medical charges, their options for dealing with medical bills and ways of recovering damages so the bills can be paid, is what I do as a transportation accident attorney.