RE: Dealing with off-grid emergencies and how to prepare
Wow, that's so close to home and must have been a super scary experience. It was very lucky you knew first aid and that he did minimal damage to the internal components of his foot. Should leave a nice scar though.
I still cringe when my little bro starts up the chainsaw. My family live in a remote country town on the boarder of NSW & VIC. My brother who is a little in the wild side, took a bomb car out for a paddock thrashing only to hit a wombat hole going 80km an hour. Flipping the car and throwing him from it at the age of 14. He was so lucky he got thrown out or he would have been crushed. He was airlifted by helicopter to ACT hospital with frontal lobe damage. His now 23 and still has huge anger management issues.
But that doesn't even measure on what happened when I was about 10/11, again a country property in the middle of nowhere but this time a family friends place. As country kids we fended for ourselves often so it wasn't unusual for our parents to leave us for hours at a time. This time there were 6 kids all under 12, four girls and two boys. We were playing chasey as kids do and the girls decided it would be funny to lock to boys out. One of the boys was not impressed banging on the glass door hard enough that his hand went through it. Splitting his wrist vertically and hitting his vein. I have never seen so much blood in my life. Not knowing first aid and being one of the oldest it was horrific. Some of us tried to stop it with tissues to no available the eldest was on the phone to emergency. We had sent the youngest ones off to the neighbours a few kilometers run for adult help. Lucky the emergency people walked us though what to do and we were able to slow the bleeding until the adults/ambulance got there.
Vowing I would never feel that way again. As soon as I was old enough I got my first aid and renew it regularly to ensure I have at least the basics to aid in an emergency.