Someone?s nurse has a daughter. … Someone in sales has two children. … A colleague?s younger sister has multiple friends in Blacksburg.
As the nation took a collective breath, it began to hear stories about those close to the mayhem at Virginia Tech.
“We were doing a procedure,” said Jack Vaeth, staff psychologist at Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore. “One of the nurses pulls this up on an Internet site because one of her younger sisters is a Virginia Tech student. I literally watched her entire [coping] mechanism unfold.”
For the most part, he said, families who have children or friends at Virginia Tech were likely to be “barraged” with calls Monday and today, Vaeth said. That?s not the best idea, as well-wishers could make their ordeal more difficult.
Parents of Virginia Tech students have enough to deal with, just trying to get their children on the phone to make sure they are all right. Vaeth expects many families will go to Blacksburg to bring their children back, some perhaps for the rest of the semester.
Handling the volume of dead and wounded ? 33 dead and 29 injured ? could overwhelm local care centers, said Maryland shock trauma chief Dr. Thomas M. Scalea.
“There?s only one trauma center that?s even close to Blacksburg, that?s Roanoke,” Scalea said, “and the choppers are all down because of the wind.”
At least three victims were treated Monday at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, a level-one trauma center 35 miles from campus. The level-one rating means the hospital is equipped to treat the most serious medical problems.
Montgomery Regional Hospital, a level-three trauma center five miles from campus handled 17 victims. At least five victims were being treated at Lewis Gale Medical Center in Salem, 25 miles away. And four others were admitted to Carilion New River Valley Medical Center, a level-three facility 20 miles away in Radford, school officials said
Still, Scalea said, you can?t ignore the pain of parents whose children are at Blacksburg.
“My executive assistant?s daughter goes there,” he said. “That was a bit of a chest-grabber until she found out her daughter was safe.”
