Victim grabbed severed hand out of machine
A WORKER, whose severed hand was saved by skilled Staffordshire surgeons, has spoken of coolly retrieving the bloody limb from industrial machinery.
Christopher Wright, 57, was working at a carton machine when the accident happened.
He said: “I grabbed my arm out of the machine, squeezed it and called for help.
“I called for a first aider who then called for an ambulance. I remained conscious the whole time that this was happening.”
Mr Wright, from Shropshire, was taken to Stoke’s North Midlands Major Trauma Centre, the left hand in a secure bag next to him.
From there, he was transferred by air ambulance to the Royal Derby Hospital Pulvertaft Hand Centre, where an expert team led by consultant hand and plastic surgeon Mary O’Brien spent 11 hours re-attaching the hand.
Mr Wright had regained some movement in the fingers only seven days after the op.
He has, however, lost his little finger and the forearm was shortened to create a smooth surface for the surgical re-attachment.
The accident happened while Mr Wright was working at a Wrexham packaging factory on February 10. He said: “While working on a cardboard cartons machine, the chains grabbed my overalls and pulled my hand into the machine. I heard a
snap noise and at that moment I knew I had lost my hand. After going on a first aid responder course a couple of years back, my training from then instantly kicked in.”
Surgeon Mary O’Brien described Mr Wright as inspirational.
She said: “He has a very positive outlook and is motivated in the face of what has been a life-changing industrial injury.
“The operation on Mr Wright’s hand was the result of a highly coordinated response from so many professionals working efficiently together.
“This included the ambulance and helicopter crew who brought Mr
Wright to the emergency department, the Pulvertaft Hand Centre theatre team who performed the surgery while supported by their anaesthetic colleagues and, subsequently, nursing and therapy staff on the ward and in the clinic.
“Due to the nature of the injury, the surgery came with additional challenges. This resulted in an 11-and-a-half hour operation to reattach Mr Wright’s amputated hand.
“This was an extremely complex procedure which involved five consultant surgeons from the Pulvertaft Hand Centre as well as a wider multidisciplinary team.
“The combined skill set of the team
with backgrounds including plastic and orthopaedic training was fundamental to achieving the very positive outcome that, at this early stage, we are all so pleased to witness.
“Although we look after many patients with a range of different types of injury, it is very unusual to replant a whole hand.
“It’s a testament to the ability and professionalism of the whole team to come together despite a pandemic that makes it such a privilege to be part of the Pulvertaft Hand Centre.”
Mr Wright was thankful for their expertise, adding: “The work the surgeons and staff have done is amazing – they are unbelievable people.”
CRASH deaths are ‘unavoidable’ on Birmingham’s smart motorways as there is nowhere safe for broken-down drivers to stop, a lawyer has warned.
Manjinder Singh Kang, of motoring specialists Kang and Co, said the M6 was an ‘accident waiting to happen’ after working on a case involving the needless death of a van driver.
The motorist died in a five-vehicle crash after he was forced to stop in live traffic between junctions six and five as there was no hard shoulder.
But no one involved in the pile-up was prosecuted as there was nowhere for oncoming traffic to go when faced with a stationary vehicle on a 70mph carriageway. The collision was “unavoidable” because of the lack of a hard shoulder, Mr Kang said.
The lawyer, who worked on the M6 case four years ago, called for safer measures to be implemented by the Highways Agency before more deaths were caused.
Mr Kang spoke as an investigation into the safety of smart motorways was launched by the House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the committee earlier this month that he “inherited” smart motorways, and pledged to get “get rid of confusions”.
These include “insane” dynamic hard shoulders, which switch between being used for emergencies and live traffic depending on demand.
He published a smart motorways action plan with 18 measures to boost safety.
“A person will be charged with death by careless driving if their driving falls below the required standard of a careful and competent motorist,” Mr Kang explained. “For death by dangerous driving, the standard would have to fall far below that of a careful and competent motorist.
“However, on smart motorways you would have to ask: ‘Would any other driver have reacted differently?’
“As past cases, such as that involving the van driver on the M6, have proved, unfortunately no they wouldn’t have done due to the design of the road and it was an accident waiting to happen.
“The driver wasn’t careless because the collision was unavoidable due to there being no hard shoulder available. “In that case the driver wasn’t prosecuted for causing death by careless driving as he did what another reasonable driver would have done in those circumstances.”
Deaths on smart motorways will always be harder to prosecute because of the set up of the road, Mr Kang explained. His call for change came after the Highways Agency was referred to the CPS by a Doncaster coroner after the death of grandmother Nargis Begum on the M1 – a smart motorway without a hard shoulder.
A spokesman for Highways England said: “In March 2020 the Government published a smart motorway evidence stocktake report which found that, in most ways, smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than, conventional ones. But not in every way. We want to do everything we can to make our motorways as safe as possible and we are working hard to deliver the improvements set out in the Transport Secretary’s action plan.”