'Spectacularly quick' train crash response saved lives

Emergency crews responding to the train collision near Bedford feared and prepared for "100 casualties and up to 20 fatalities", it has emerged.

Daryl Brown, the chief executive officer of Cambridgeshire-based Magpas Air Ambulance, said the immediate response had been "spectacularly quick" adding that he believed extensive training had saved lives.

The Magpas unit was the first air ambulance at the scene and seven helicopters attended from across the country.

Train driver Shaun Burton, 60, died when two East Midlands Railway (EMR) services to London St Pancras collided at about 17:15 BST on the line on Friday.

In total, more than 100 people have been treated for their injuries, as 53 people remain in hospital with eight still in a critical condition, British Transport Police confirmed.

Brown said the East Anglian Air Ambulance, Essex & Herts Air Ambulance, London's Air Ambulance, Midlands Air Ambulance, and the Air Ambulance Service, all attended.

"With other emergency service partners, our teams provided advanced critical care to those who were seriously injured," he added.

He said it was called to the major incident at 17:15 and its helicopter was in the air by 17:19.

"Our first crew was dispatched by air, which included a pilot, a technical crew member, a doctor, a paramedic, and a second doctor."

He said the same team had attended Johnsons of Old Hurst, near Huntingdon, where at three-year-old boy was critically injured after ending up in a crocodile enclosure.

Brown set up a crisis command at its Alconbury Weald base and dispatched 10 medical team members, who treated 30 of the most seriously injured patients.

He said his "thoughts and deepest condolences remain with everyone affected by this tragic incident".

"I think there are many more people alive, thanks to the efforts of not just our air ambulance, there were seven air ambulance teams on scene, the police, the fire, the ambulance service," Brown said.

One of the patients the charity treated was sent to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, he said.

Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge also treated a number of patients, as well as Bedford Hospital and the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital.

The Beds & Herts Emergency Critical Care Scheme said it sent nine volunteers to the incident, including doctors and paramedics.

Brown said the charity worked with major trauma networks, and crews on the ground, to confirm the best places to send patients and notify hospitals in advance.

"Some of the sophisticated diagnostic stuff that we're all carrying these days we can send images to the hospitals, with things like CT scans so the hospitals know exactly what is coming in and be prepared," he said.

"The most important thing with the air ambulances is that we bring the hospital to the patient.

"All the initial things that would need to be done in the resus or through the emergency department are just bypassed and that patient can sometimes be taken directly into surgery.

"This is utterly life saving."

He said Magpas was regularly sent to major incidents and was also first on the scene of a knife attack on a train in Cambridgeshire.

"We're pretty well versed in it sadly, but also there is a fantastic system across the whole of the NHS and emergency services, where we get together and we train and we train and we train for these events."

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