Originally Posted By: Phaedrus
Originally Posted By: Art_in_FL

The BBC story says that the main injury, possibly the only one, was from being gored in the leg. Evidently it caught a major vessel. If someone had known to, and had enough on the ball to think to do it, a tourniquet might have kept him from bleeding out.


It's especially sad since apparently he was a nurse. And according to MSN.com, a doctor attempted to treat him shortly after the attack. It's possible that the victim was in shock and was incapable of assisting in his own treatment and/or that he'd already lost too much blood for the doctor to stabilize him. But it may be more likely that applying a TQ didn't occur to anyone. It used to be that the prevailing dogma was that a TQ just showed the surgeon where to perform the amputation but recent military experience has shown that to be false. IIRC the new standard of care for massive hemmorage is application of a TQ, then the application of high-flow diesel. A proplerly applied TQ can be left on for up to eight hours (according to recent information) without harm to the limb. And of course, even in an extreme case I'd rather be alive and missing one leg than dead with both of them.


It ends up that I knew this victim a bit, we have hiked around alot of the same trails above Port Angeles - there are places where hikers stop to chat and those where folks rush on by, the Olys seem to be one of those places where you talk and meet people, and I have talked with Bob Boardman a handful of times. I'm very sorry to hear what happened, may he rest in peace. My condolences to his wife, family and friends. He loved the outdoors, very much, and he loved his family as well. He was a good man.

The Seattle Times has a fair account of the attack by the goat, best I've seen so far - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013189753_olympicpark18m.html. It sounds like even a tourniquet would not have made much of a difference. The goat was standing over him and couldn't be waved off for at least 15 minutes - another part of the account says first medical assistance couldn't begin for almost 50 minutes, by which time the victim had lost alot of blood and had no pulse. Its a first fatal attack by any type of animal in the Park, amazing to me given the number of black bears I've seen all over the place. I have always kept my distance from goats even when hiking partners do something insipid like sidle in for a close up picture. They are big, strong wild animals, prone to acting like wild animals. Now at least I'll have a reason to tell them to stop that crap.