Duelling Zambonis – Zamboni injury
I like Zambonis. I like the name. I like the way they drive. I like the fact that they are slow, odd-looking and apparently safe. I’ve never seen a fight break at a Hockey game out because of the Zamboni. However, even these benign ice machines can cause injury.
According to The Canadian Paramedic Web a Zamboni’s blades can cause accidental injury to ice rink employees. In an article entitled, “Zamboni injury leaves B.C. victim steaming” it was reported that a driver lost two fingertips to a Zamboni last week. The ice rink worker was cleaning ice out of a Zamboni when his fingers got caught in the blade. I have tried cases where an employee’s fingers were caught in a lawnmower, but never heard of a Zamboni blade injury before.
A fire department crew quickly arrived and bandaged him. However, compounding his bad luck with the ice-cleaning machine was the fact that the ambulance they called for never showed. After almost 45 minutes and no ambulance in sight, the injured worker’s boss had to rush him to the hospital. The medical director for the Ambulance department, said at that time, there was a peak in demand for life-threatening calls. However, when the injured Zamboni driver arrived the General Hospital, he had his hand frozen and was told to come back the next day for surgery. We he went back early the next morning he was told that the hospital’s hand surgeon was away that week and they would try to find another surgeon to attend to his finger lacerations. When he was finally scheduled for surgery he was given instructions to go to the nearest hand surgeon at another Hospital in another town because the General Hospital has only one plastic surgeon who takes on about 65 per cent of the calls. When their surgeon is away, the General Hospital send patients to nearby hospitals. It is reports like this that make me realize how fortunate we are in the Northern Virginia / Washington D.C. metropolitan area to have so many excellent Hospitals, surgeons and medical specialists available to treat injured workers, athletes and their families.
