been saved with today
Advances at Kimball noted
as Hindenburg is recalled
More lives would have
been saved with today’s
emergency technology
By Joyce Blay
Staff Writer
COURTESY OF KIMBALL MEDICAL CENTER An archival photo recalls the time when the Kimball Medical Center, Lakewood, was known as Paul Kimball Hospital and treated victims of the Hindenburg disaster.
LAKEWOOD — In 1937, a spark ignited the rear section of the hydrogen-filled airship Hindenburg as it attempted to land at Lakehurst after a trip from Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. The explosion sent the mammoth zeppelin, intended to symbolize Nazi Germany’s air superiority, crashing to earth in a massive fireball.
Only 33 of the 70 passengers who were treated at Paul Kimball Hospital survived the wreckage. Only a twisted metal skeleton of the ship remained.
Journalist Marguerite Mooers Marshall, who wrote for the New York Evening World, described the scene that greeted her when she arrived at Kimball Hospital on May 7, 1931, to cover the story.
"Its wards lined cot to cot with seared and broken survivors of the Hindenburg disaster, the Paul Kimball Hospital was a house of agony and horror today," wrote Marshall.
Dr. William Dalsey
Things have changed since then, according to Dr. William Dalsey, 48, emergency department medical director at Kimball.
"It is only in the last three or four years that people [became] better focused on how to manage and treat situations [involving] large numbers of people," said Dalsey, a physician who trained in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati and later in the U.S. military. "Many more people survive their traumas or other injuries than did in the past, and that’s something we’re proud of."
An affiliate of the St. Barnabas Health Care System, the 350-bed Kimball Medical Center was founded in 1913 as Paul Kimball Hospital. As medical science progressed, so did Kimball’s ability to treat its patients’ injuries and illnesses.
But in 1937, less than 25 years after the hospital had opened its doors to the community, medicine was still evolving, Dalsey said.
"At the time of the Hindenburg disaster, there was no well-organized ambulance system," he said. "Typically, the ambulance was a hearse sent by the funeral house."
Dalsey said the medical personnel that arrived on scene to treat the victims did not have anything more sophisticated to treat the injured than a splint and a cravat, which was also used as a fashion accessory.
"I don’t know which came first," Dalsey said.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, the outlook for those patients still alive was not much improved. Dalsey said that there were no antibiotics, and anesthesia could not be used with the assurance that the patient would safely wake up.
"There were many more side effects associated with its use that could further compromise the patient’s injuries," he said.
Even the surgery itself was fraught with danger, inviting a greater risk of infection, Dalsey said.
"Today, if someone fell out of the Hindenburg and fractured his leg, a metal rod would be inserted into the bone to stabilize fragments and allow it to heal," he said. "Back then, they were stuck splinting or putting the injured into traction. People bled to death or ended up with shorter limbs."
Those patients who did not become disabled by the treatment just as often had their limbs amputated, Dalsey said.
Dalsey also said that treatment of burns had advanced considerably since those days, although it is now more regionalized in designated burn centers.
Allografts, cadaver grafts, pig skin grafts and use of the patient’s own skin are all options used in the treatment of severe burns.
Those options were not available to doctors at Kimball in 1937. Marshall’s news article contained an interview she had with a nurse at Kimball who told her that many of the Hindenburg’s victims suffered burns on their faces and hands.
"They were painfully and in many cases agonizingly burned," Marshall wrote. "The heads of many are a mass of bandages. In some cases, the clothing was badly singed and had to be cut off. The patients in most cases are being kept under opiates."
Just as much a concern was smoke inhalation, said Dalsey, who noted that there were no ventilators to treat respiratory problems back then.
Marshall described her conversation with other nurses on duty at the hospital on the day Hindenburg victims were admitted. They confirmed Dalsey’s assessment that shock was indeed a contributing factor to the fatality rate.
"They were shaking and shivering. Their faces were gray-white with terror and pain, and their eyes looked haunted. … They died of shock, not burns, but shock. They were almost literally frightened to death," Marshall wrote.
There is less chance of that happening to victims of disasters in 2003, Dalsey said.
"There are more advanced nursing specializations (today)," said Dalsey, who attributed that diversification to the higher survival rate of Kimball’s patients today compared with 100 years ago.
Equally important is the equipment at Kimball that was not available in the 1930s, he added. Monitors, defibrillators and antibiotics combine to provide a safety net for patients, and they are incorporated into the design of the new emergency department.
According to Alyssa Ruby-Mako, director of marketing and public relations for Kimball, the emergency department currently serves 42,000 patients a year. When the third phase of the 20,000-square-foot expansion is completed at the end of the year — at an estimated cost of $27 million — Kimball officials anticipate that as many as 60,000 patients a year will be seen by the hospital.
Phase I included the expansion of the existing emergency department and the Psychiatric Emergency Screening Service, as well as the construction of a lobby that will be used exclusively by the emergency department.
As part of Phase II, the hospital opened an outpatient pavilion that is larger than the original and located next to the emergency department’s waiting area.
When Phase III is finished in December, a new radiology suite that will house the center’s 16-multi-slice CT Scan, a high-tech MRI, and a digital radiographic examination room will be open for patient treatment.
"This expansion was a defining moment for emergency care in general, as well as for Kimball," Ruby-Mako said. "It provides a comfortable environment for patients, families and visitors alike, as well as a facility capable of providing emergency care that is both compassionate as well as state of the art."
Ruby-Mako said those who have seen the newly designed area told staff that it reminded them of a hotel lobby or airport waiting room, which she said was exactly the hospital’s intention.
So is providing quality health care to as many patients as possible, Dalsey said.
When the department’s expansion is completed, "we will be able to see [as many as] 150 people a day with all types of problems and we can resuscitate many more people than in the past," he said. "We’re there, all the time, and we’ll help anyone regardless of their ability to pay."