another accident- Natasha Richardson in critical

[drjeff]

this is tragic.

i can;t comprehend how this can be fatal. everything suggests this was a low speed crash that wasn;t violent. they are very quick to say she was on a beginner trail, taking a lesson which makes me think there is more too this.

did go off trail by accident and hit a tree or an icy snow embankment? I know someone got killed at Belleyare a few years ago like that.

or did she get run into by someone?

How many times over your snow sliding career have you had that random edge hook (at ANY rate of speed)?? My guess is ALOT. Happens to everyone and on almost ANY terrain.

It says on IMDB that she's 5'9" tall, add in ski/boot/binding height, and you're looking at a fall from 6 or so feet for the head onto a solid surface, and if it was on one of those quick edge hook situations, you can see how one can generate some decent speed of impact, even on a beginner slope at presumably a low rate of speed. As I've said before what really makes me think that it was this type of scenario is the report that the ski instructor very quickly suggested that she go and get checked out - could it be a media/legal CYA thing, sure, but something tells me not in this case.

Just sounds like an incredibly unfortunate, but plausable accident scenario.

 

[automagp68]

Makes me want a helmet for sure.

 

[Trekchick]

Haven't read this whole thread, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating but, it appears that she had a minor tumble, was wearing a helmet, and the impact was not as significant as the actual moving of the brain inside from a jarring.
See this video clip from ABC news.
Ugh.


http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7109626

 

[tekweezle]

i;ve hit my head on the snow hard enough to have a temporary blackout and see stars. good thing I was wearing a helmet.

she must have been going faster than they are suggesting.

this is going to be a pr nightmare.

 

[SkiDork]

Haven't read this whole thread, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating but, it appears that she had a minor tumble, was wearing a helmet, and the impact was not as significant as the actual moving of the brain inside from a jarring.
See this video clip from ABC news.
Ugh.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7109626

so now they're saying she WAS wearing a helmet?

 

[Trekchick]

I've seen one report that said she was but others that said she was not.
I'm sooooo confused.

 

[drjeff]

i;ve hit my head on the snow hard enough to have a temporary blackout and see stars. good thing I was wearing a helmet.

she must have been going faster than they are suggesting.

this is going to be a pr nightmare.

The thing is, you DON'T have to be going fast to have something like this happen. Think about it, you hear in the news every now and then about someone fainting/passing out while just standing up and hitting their head on the ground/counter/toilet/etc. and causing a significant head injury. It's all about what angle your body/head strikes the ground in a fall.

 

[mondeo]

she must have been going faster than they are suggesting.

No. If you catch an edge, your head can hit the ground faster than if your head just dropped from 6 ft up. With the freeze/thaws recently, decent chance it was hardpack/ice. Dropping your head from 6 feet onto ice is more than enough to cause a concussion. Not all that surprising that if you hit your head in a very specific way it would be enough to cause some fairly serious issues.

 

[drjeff]

I've seen one report that said she was but others that said she was not.
I'm sooooo confused.

The AP wire feed, which it seems like most of the major networks are using for their story, says that per a statement from the PR person @ Tremblant that she WASN'T wearing a helmet.

CBS's and NBC's version of the story while very similar in most of the text to CNN's, ABC's and Fox's omited the 1 small paragraph with the lack of helmet reference.

 

[Trekchick]

The thing is, you DON'T have to be going fast to have something like this happen. Think about it, you hear in the news every now and then about someone fainting/passing out while just standing up and hitting their head on the ground/counter/toilet/etc. and causing a significant head injury. It's all about what angle your body/head strikes the ground in a fall.

This is the point of the link in my earlier post
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Movies/story?id=7109531&page=1

It seems that her impact was not significant enough to have a single location of impact but was significant enough to "jostle" her brain, sort of like shaken baby syndrome.

 

[drjeff]

This is the point of the link in my earlier post
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Movies/story?id=7109531&page=1

It seems that her impact was not significant enough to have a single location of impact but was significant enough to "jostle" her brain, sort of like shaken baby syndrome.

For a very interesting read/hijack - take a glance through the comment section at the end of that article

This just sounds like the 1 in 1,000,000 scenario fall that caused what appears to be an incredibly awfull outcome

 

[billski]

Sometimes having a helmet doesn't help at all. In my wife's case, was standing motionless, hit from behind, she went face first into the hardpack. Nice ride to the hospital with a concussion. Granted it's the rare case, but nobody seems to know the exact details yet.

I also have a dent in my head from moving a ladder but neglecting to recall the hammer was still atop. Only partially explains my 50 IQ....

 

[deadheadskier]

i;ve hit my head on the snow hard enough to have a temporary blackout and see stars. good thing I was wearing a helmet.

she must have been going faster than they are suggesting.

this is going to be a pr nightmare.

not necessarily, freak accidents do happen at very slow rates of speed. A couple of my employees at Snowshoe were snowboarding one warm spring day with soft snow. They were at the flat run out of a green trail heading towards the lift at a very low rate of speed, MAYBE 10 mph, maybe. One of them caught an edge and fell. Resulted in a ruptured spleen, 4 days in the hospital and ended his season.

Hard to truly speculate and really say anything other than it was completely a freak accident. As another poster alerted to earlier in the thread, they lost a family member due to a head injury that most poeple would suspect would only cause a minor bump.

 

[arik]

I am having trouble believing she was seriously injured since she was discharged from the hospital and allowed to fly on an airplane. Head trauma gets a head CT to r/o bleed which I am sure they did, and if it was ok she's probably ok.

 

[billski]

I am having trouble believing she was seriously injured since she was discharged from the hospital and allowed to fly on an airplane. Head trauma gets a head CT to r/o bleed which I am sure they did, and if it was ok she's probably ok.

You can check yourself out of a hospital anytime over a doc/hospital's objections, even if the consequences are potentially fatal. You have to sign away all liability, but then you're free to go. Chances are the family decided such, because the either wanted better care and/or closer to home.

 

[drjeff]

I am having trouble believing she was seriously injured since she was discharged from the hospital and allowed to fly on an airplane. Head trauma gets a head CT to r/o bleed which I am sure they did, and if it was ok she's probably ok.

Chances are when the discharge occurred ALL the damage had been done(and was probably even done by the time she was transferred from the 1st smallish hospital near Tremblant down to the larger facility in Montreal) and it was a move to get her closer to home/family for her final moments. If it was an actual ongoing could go either way medical situation, your right, as long as that hospital in Montreal had a good neurosurgeon, she'd still be in that hospital.

Brain death can be a very, very, very weird thing, where mechanically the heart is still pumping away like there's nothing wrong, but there can be absolutely no electrical activity in the brain, and hence a "life" as we know it

 

[tekweezle]

the only thing we know is that we don;t all the facts....maybe a witness to the accident will step forward and fill in the details. taking solely at face value, it is of course possible that everything happened exactly the way it;s been explained. I just find it just...bizarre....either way, i think I smell a possible wrongful death suit brewing.....which sucks for the entire industry.

anyway, hope it never happens to anyone you know.

2 of my coworkers suffered terrible season ending injuries this season that could have been flukes. one coworker was boarding at a high rate of speed in vail on a flat trail and caught an edge and cartwheeled and somersaulted spectacularly from what i had heard. he ended up in the hospital for a week with a bruised kidney and lost some percentage of it. another was skiing in deer valley, apparently on a trail a little bit too steep for her, caught an edge, ski didn;t release and tore her acl completely-the odd thing is she finished skiing the run. this past weekend at Belleayre, i wasn;t paying attention on the tomahawk lift and my ski hit the lift support where the chair came real close to it, and twisted my ski. i skied the rest of the day but sometime during the day, it felt like i couldn;t put weight on that leg....

 

[billski]

I can recall reports many of very serious injuries over the years, most of which happened on gentle terrain at low rates of speed.

 

[Mildcat]

This is the point of the link in my earlier post
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Movies/story?id=7109531&page=1

It seems that her impact was not significant enough to have a single location of impact but was significant enough to "jostle" her brain, sort of like shaken baby syndrome.

The Dr also said it could have been a preexisting condition that could have been triggered by the fall.

 

[marcski]

I agree with Bill, many injuries happen at low speeds and on easier terrain.

As others have intimated, this, unfortunately, sounds like a freak accident. I know someone who was a healthy, athletic, vibrant man in his late 50's, with a 2nd family and young kids and walked out of a restaurant and tripped over a cement planter on the sidewalk and died from a head injury. It happens on and off the slopes.