Swarm Save is the first story from the first episode of Season 5, which aired on September 14, 1993 on CBS. It airs in syndication on Episode 275S: Swarm Save; A Defib Runs Through It.
Story[]
Around 10:30pm on June 4, 1990, along a lonely stretch of road outside of Douglas, Georgia, Charles Day and his nephew, Michael Brown, were driving to deliver an eight-ton load of beehives to a location 160 miles away.
Charles asked Michael for a cigarette, which he gave him. As Charles lit it, Michael noticed that the truck was headed for a ditch. It then fell onto its side, freeing millions of honeybees and leaving Charles pinned inside. Michael told the first car he saw to call 911. However, he didn't notice that lots of the bees were on him, until they started stinging him all over.
Michael was attempting to free Charles and trying to get the bees off him, but he knew he couldn't stop trying to do the former. Coffee County EMS units were immediately dispatched.
Sheriff's Deputy Evelyn Taylor was the first to arrive, unaware of the truck's cargo. She was shocked when she got out of her patrol car and noticed the bees swarming toward it, realizing they were attracted to the lights and provoked by the siren. Michael told her that smoke would help calm them. She gave him paper to burn, but it was no use. They went into the patrol car with her, stinging her many times. She made a call to incoming units on her radio, preparing them for numerous bee stings.
Within 6 minutes of the call, paramedic Henry Lewis and EMT Johnny Knight arrived at the scene. It appeared to be a normal truck wreck until they noticed millions of the bees swarming toward them, attracted to the lights on the ambulance. Johnny said that while Charles was pinned in the truck, being attacked by so many bees for five minutes, he was in there too long, and it looked like he may have fractured his femur as well. So on top of the many bee stings, he may also have been dealing with blood loss.
Charles needed to be removed from the truck quickly and they tried to get as much additional help to the scene as possible, but they were faced with the problem that many people are allergic to bee stings, so any rescuers with that had to stay in their vehicles.
Douglas City Firefighter Waylon Moore and his partner arrived to begin the extraction. They wore full turnout gear to try to protect themselves from being stung, but it wasn't working. The bees stung Waylon's bald head, face, arms, and legs, and even got into his clothes.
Because the bees were attracted to the lights on the ambulance, they swarmed around them and fell off in clumps. It was impossible to go near the ambulance for any gear. Deputy Taylor stated that dealing with the bees and trying to calm them was even worse than someone pulling a gun on her, which she had dealt with before. It ran through Johnny and Henry's minds several times to call a surgeon to come to the scene and perform an emergency amputation of Charles' leg, to make it easier to get him out of the truck.
When a second ambulance arrived, the paramedics knew to turn off its lights and siren. One of them, who was allergic to bee stings, stayed inside, while his partner, Lamar Douglas, went to help get Charles out. He was ready for anything, even numerous bee stings. Johnny asked him if he was allergic just to make sure, and Lamar didn't think he was.
But he was wrong; he had only been trying to help free Charles for less than a minute when he came back up and one side of his face was covered with bees. He looked bright red and couldn't speak, and his eyes were rolled up in his head. He was in very severe anaphylactic shock, and Johnny was worried that his airway might close; once one does, it is hard to reopen it. He had been on the scene for less than five minutes, and was in worse shape than Charles. Now he and the other paramedic were both useless.
People were pulling up and trying to help, but if everybody had allergic reactions, it would become a disaster. Charles' father, who was also a beekeeper, came to help get him out of the truck, but Deputy Taylor thought they couldn't free him before he was dead. By the time rescuers finally did so, he had been pinned in the truck for nearly an hour. Around the same time, a water truck finally arrived, and began spraying water which helped calm the bees a lot.
Lamar's heart rate was very slow, and they worked hard to keep him from dying on the way to the hospital. Suddenly, Johnny saw Henry turn very pale. He was scared because they had given all they had to Lamar, and didn't want the same thing to happen to Henry. It could have been either the bee venom, extreme fatigue, or possibly both. "All I could think about was that we'd given Lamar all of the drugs and I'm fixing to die," said Henry.
They arrived at Coffee Regional Hospital, where everyone got a series of shots, and those who were able to go back to work did so. Charles and Lamar were put under the care of Dr. Romulo Navarro. He was surprised that Lamar had not died, saying bee stings are sometimes even more dangerous than rattlesnake bites, and you can die in less than 30 minutes if you go into anaphylactic shock.
Because Charles had been a beekeeper for many years, he had a high tolerance to bee stings. He was treated for injuries sustained in the accident and released four days later. Lamar was hospitalized for eight days. He remembers waking up in the ICU about a day and a half after the accident, and the doctors told him he didn't have a very high chance of surviving, and was very lucky to have survived.
The section of the road where the wreck had occurred was closed for several days due to the bees, because anybody who drives with their windows down would be stung many times.
After the accident, Charles retired from beekeeping and moved to Florida, where he met and married Judy Mattis. "I wouldn't wish the wreck on anyone," she said. "If that hadn't have happened and he wasn't down here, I never would have met him, I might not be married, and I might not be as happy as I am." "It just makes me think a little differently about everything," he said. "Be a little more careful, and help other people a little more." He thanked everybody that went through so much that night to help get him out of the truck.
Lamar developed Encephalitis as a complication of his anaphylactic shock and was unable to work for two months. "Now I just try to stay away from them (bees)," he said. He now carries medications in case he encounters bees again, has gotten much more cautious of scenes, and doesn't run into them as quickly as before.
"Anything that would fly and make a buzzing sound didn't agree with me for a good while," said Johnny. "Having bees all over you is not a good feeling unless you're a beekeeper," said Deputy Taylor. "And I'm a Deputy Sheriff, not a beekeeper. I think I'll stick to my profession." "We do not do the patients any good if we become patients," said Johnny. "We try to prepare ourselves for that, but I don't know if you can. How many times does a bee truck turn over?"
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