Angels on the earth and in the air

On Friday afternoon April 6th, shortly before 5:00 pm, Vivian York was returning from an appointment in Nipawin to her farm home near the junction of Hwys 35 and 335 in north central Saskatchewan. The Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), who works at the nursing care home in Nipawin and who previously worked in active treatment at Whitecourt General Hospital for 10 years, had seen a few traumas but none of that could have prepared her for what she was about to face.

(Full disclosure: Vivian is a good friend of the Fort Nelson News and this is her exclusive account of the accident).

One of the first to arrive at the scene of the Humboldt Broncos’ Junior Hockey bus crash, she had been alerted that something had happened further down the road in front of her. “When I was about two miles away, maybe a minute or two, I saw some debris flying into the air, I didn’t know if it was smoke or snow, now I think maybe it was debris,” York remembers.

She approached the accident from the north, so the only things immediately visible to her were the undercarriage of a peat moss truck. “I thought it was just a peat moss truck that had rolled over and that the bus was one of its trailers. There was a blue pickup truck who was trying to get around the debris on the highway and went around me heading north, so I had to pull over.”

“Then I saw a boy crawling out from under the bus, covered in blood … crawling to the side of the road (Hwy 335).  When I saw him I thought he was the truck driver. Things were reasonably quiet and all I saw was this person and one or two lay people who had just arrived on the scene also.”

As York came around to the front of the bus, “I saw a man on his phone sort of standing there and I asked him if he had called 911, he just looked at me, so I told him to call.”

Then she realized there were several injured.

“I ran to my car screaming to others to get blankets and I grabbed a dog blanket. I just started telling people what to do.” I was running down the highway getting people to stop and getting their blankets. I was telling them ‘this is severe, we need all the help we can get.’” She gathered blankets, and anything else, from sweaters to coats, from wherever she could get them, including horse blankets from cowboys travelling to a rodeo.

“The Tisdale Rodeo was that weekend and lots of traffic was coming from the north for that and there were a bunch of cars coming from the south heading to the playoff game between the Humboldt Broncos and the Nipawin Hawks,” York explained.

She immediately started to assess and triage the injured and paired arriving bystanders with the injured as she coordinated warming blankets and protection from the unusually cold spring temperatures to boys, oddly, in various stages of undress. “None of them had coats, lots of them didn’t even have shirts.

“I made sure they were assessed, positioned, breathing, covered, and was yelling to others to come to sit and be with the injured until EMS arrived. I was in nurse mode.  I assisted with the bleeding and unconscious.

Nick Shumlanski, one of York’s neighbours and one of the few passengers to actually walk away from the accident, was standing on the highway and spoke to York who at first didn’t realize he had even been on the bus, “‘You are Viv York I live just up the road” he said.

“My daughter and his sister were best friends,” said York.

“I was in triage mode. I was trying to get to the people who needed my help. All these kids were lying in snow banks.”

One boy was wandering around asking for shoes and another was asking for a blanket.  My neighbour let two boys warm up in his truck and use his phone to call their parents. It was later discovered that one of them had suffered a broken leg.

I didn’t see Ryan until I had assessed 4 or 5 people. He was leaning with his back up against the semi -trailer. I got another boy positioned and covered with blankets and had just told another lay person to ‘stay with this person’ before I went on to the next. Ryan was sitting mid-centre of the trailer with his back against the frame. He seemed to have pulled himself to a sitting position, as he had not been seen by York previously while she attended to another hockey player, around four-feet away.

Emergency Medical Services professionals didn’t arrive  “until after I had sat with Ryan for 15 or so minutes. I said we had to wait for the ambulance.

Fire trucks that had come from the south 3-4 mins apart were the first Emergency Services on scene and arrived some 10 minutes before the ambulances. They had boards brought out and were removing rubble from the area. “By that time I was sitting with Ryan where I could see a boy under the bus. He was laying on his side and the firefighters went to help him.” Next came the ambulances from the surrounding communities (they even pulled the ambulance from the rodeo), and then the police.

“I noticed Ryan was alone and didn’t have any blankets.  I went to assess him and he was conscious, and alert and we talked while we waited. He said he knew he was paralyzed. He had his hands in his lap, I could tell he was in a lot of pain and he asked to be laid down and I said I couldn’t lay him down because he might have an unstable fracture. He just listened to me, he did everything I told him to. He wasn’t screaming or freaking out. His bare back was laying against the frame of the trailer. He had a shirt on, but it was pulled up. We got a blanket behind him and another bystander who identified herself as having first aid training came with a rolled towel that acted as a neck brace.

“I just asked him his name. He asked me about his friends. He told me he was 18 years old, his name was Ryan and that he was from Calgary. He told me ‘I came here to play hockey against the Nipawin Hawks.’ He just kept asking me what had happened.”

“I stayed with Ryan for 45-mins – 1 hr because he wasn’t triaged as critical, so he was one of the last to be loaded. Other nurses had come to the scene and were putting triage tags on people. Paramedics arrived, assessed his stomach , the same as I did, to make sure there was no internal bleeding. Then they loaded him with one other.”

She thinks she had hands on about 12. “I only saw 11 or 12 people, some of whom had died, the rest were under the bus and buried under debris.” Some of the injured would be transported to Tisdale, 20 minutes to the south for stabilizing and triage, others would be transported to Nipawin 20 minutes north before being referred on to Saskatoon University Hospital.

After Ryan was taken to hospital York said, “I was freezing and they had told me I had to talk to the police, so I waited in my car and a Stars chopper landed right in front of my car as I gave my statement.”  Later that night, after midnight, York once again heard the sound of sirens as they passed by her home.

An immediate connection between Ryan Straschnitzki and York may seem to some mere coincidence but for Vivian it speaks of more.

“The thing that chilled me was that Ryan played for my hometown’s team in Whitecourt.”  Ryan played for the Whitecourt Wolverines before going on to play for Humboldt Broncos.  She began her early career there. She still has ties to the Whitecourt team and organization and reports other strange connections between herself and this young man whose fates have been forever joined.

York says she has received a professional debriefing to which, for this incident the public was invited and warm support, both public and private, from a myriad of professionals and private individuals as she moves through processing what she describes as the event that has forever changed her life. “Emergency Services commented on how everyone pulled together as we waited for EMS.”

It is almost more difficult as a medical person as you know what you need, and you don’t have anything.

“Several firefighters at the debriefing thanked me for my role and later sent me heartfelt texts,” York said. Some refer to her as an angel, just as Ryan’s dad did.

On Wednesday April 11, York received a message from Tom Straschnitzki, Ryan’s dad, asking if she wouldn’t mind coming down to the Saskatoon hospital to visit Ryan and his family.

Without a hesitation she accepted. “I am very honoured that they want to meet me and see me again. They didn’t have to invite me.”

During York’s visit with Ryan, he described the moments leading up to the crash when he felt the bus driver slam on the brakes and scream, “Whoa” looked up and saw something before everything went blank.

Nick and Ryan were seated towards the rear of the bus. “Ryan knows what seat he was in, he pointed it out to his dad in a photo.”

Vivian says this week has changed her life from experiencing the depths of grief and despair to the heights of love and wonder, she now hopes to pursue grief counselling in an attempt to pay it forward, not only for the wonderful care and counsel she received following the accident, but for a new-found sense that she may truly be of help to others who find themselves in tragic circumstances. “Because I’m getting close to retiring… I think if I could help someone like the counsellors helped me.’”

She has been overwhelmed by the impact that Ryan and his family have had on her. “This kid was laying there, his legs are paralyzed and he has a broken clavical and neck and couldn’t move his arm, but after I gave him my necklace as a gift, with his only good limb he reached up and hugged me. The family is just a beautiful family, really positive, and he’s really positive.”

The incident has changed my life and Ryan’s life and he’s an amazing kid. And somehow I was meant to be involved. He wasn’t panicking, he wasn’t screaming, he is accepting. His resolve: “this is my fate and what am I going to do with this. He said this the very next day. He didn’t say ‘oh no my life is over.’” I just want Ryan to know how amazing he is and how he didn’t panic or freak out.

I was really grateful for everyone who came and helped; who even came up to me and asked me what they could do. I never saw anyone just standing around gawking. Even people with no medical experience, who just sat with the injured. Two young girls who had no prior experience, no idea about how to deal with something like this stopped and helped. Never saw death let alone to that magnitude. People were just so helpful.

The world is so small, there is some reason I had this experience.

As Ryan and his family say, “When one door closes, another one opens up.”

While this horrendous event did happen in north-central Saskatchewan, its reach has resounded as a single global heart break. This interconnectedness has been reflected across the globe where 134,500 individuals and organizations from more than 65 countries have chipped in in 10 days to the Go Fund Me fundraising campaign, that will end 11:59 tonight, and has reached over $13M dollars. It is ranked the top Go Fund Me campaign ever in Canada.  The global participation in support of the little town of Humboldt and their golden hockey team, has hockey sticks adorning deserts on the other side of the earth, and on far away continents across the map of this tiny blue planet.

Parents, players, hockey fans and anyone who feels the gut wrenching sadness associated with the April 6th event on that lonely highway in Canada, as well as the tremendous sense of loss, are able to relieve just a little of that grief by sharing the story of one nurse, Viv York, and her precious charge and courage.