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You're listening to KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle Show on demand on the
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iHeartRadio app. You are listening to the Bill Handle Show on a Wednesday morning,
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March twenty seven. Bill Handle, Here, Morning, crew, and
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what's going on around the world and here locally, Well, California have fast
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food workers are now getting twenty dollars minimum wage effective next week, and fast
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food restaurants are laying off. We can't afford twenty bucks an hour, and
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so there's gonna be a backlash on that one, as in, you gotta
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go to McDonald's and youre gonna have a fourteen dollars burgle Burglar. You know,
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I went to King's Fish House yesterday. It's a chain. I happen
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to like them a lot. A Burglar's twenty one bucks. It's not unusual.
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Now. Used to be fifteen, fourteen to fifteen dollars for steakhouse burgers.
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Go to a high end steakhouse, you'd pay fourteen to fifteen bucks.
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Now you've got a moderately priced restaurant, it's twenty one dollars, and it's
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well, hey, welcome to the world of inflation. Now I'm going to
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go back and revisit the Baltimore Bridge bridge crash, and now the investigators are
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coming out trying to figure out what happened. One of the we're trying to
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figure out what happened. Did the ship have contaminated fuel and did that cause
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the ship losing power which it did and crashing into the span which it did.
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And safety investigators haven't even gone aboard the ship yet as of late last
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night. It's stuck at that pillar. If you've seen the video of this
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thing crashing into the pillar and then the whole bridge coming down, it's extraordinary
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that vessel which has crashed into the pillar and the bridge has crashed around it.
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The whole front end of the ship has all kinds of bridge girders,
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etc. On it, and a lot of damage there that could remain in
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that location for weeks. And we're talking about the entire port of Baltimore.
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This is a major major problem. So the lights on the Dally on the
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Dolly began to flicker about an hour after the ship left. The let's its
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berth and a harbor pilot, because the captains don't steer the ships out of
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harbors. These are harbor pilots. No, the harbor and that's who controls
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the ship. A harbor pilot and an assistant reported there were power issues,
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We've lost propulsion. Just before the crash, an officer aboard the boat said,
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the vessel went dead, no steering, no steering power, no electronics.
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One of the engines coughed and then stopped, and the smell of burned
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fuel was everywhere in the engine room, and it was pitch black, and
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the ship didn't have time to even drop its anchor to stop the drifting.
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And the crew members issued a mayday call just before the crash, which authorities
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were able to keep people off the bridge, and it was if you think
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of the number of deaths and cars that went over, it's a miracle there
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were so few. By the way, blackouts do happen, considered a major
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accident for ships, a risk for ships, specially in port. And one
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of the causes, as I said, contaminated fuel. So what's going on,
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Well, the investigators are the NTSB as well as the ship, the
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ship itself, the owners of the ship. They're looking at the black box
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which every ship has, trying to figure out. Ship built in twenty fifteen
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by Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea. I can carry up to ten thousand
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containers, and this is one of the ships that regularly transit the Panama the
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Suez Canals. Now it's not one of those one hundred thousand ton ships,
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the giant giant container ships, but this is a workhorse. And the ship
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has had more than twenty port State control inspection. When a ship goes into
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port, the authorities can board the ship and inspect it before it actually goes
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to its berth. And this has happened twenty times on this ship. And
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there have been a few problems with it, deficiencies and the hull, deficiencies
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with the power, but for the most part, well, the last inspection
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it was the US Coast Guard and they said the ship is fine, and
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so a couple things. It was moving it around nine miles an hour.
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That's normal typical for areas for ships traveling in the area. The lawsuits that
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are going to come astronomical, they are going to be well there already is
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and will be multi billion dollars insurance claims. You've got loss to the structure
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the city, disruption to all the businesses using the port. Litigation is going
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to happen, and a law professor at the University of Reading said, you
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can write off ten years now in court actions. So you got insurance companies
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and you think the insurance company is going to pay this out. Well,
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insurance companies use insurance companies, they're called reinsurers that they ensure the risk that
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your All State, your Geico or whatever has They sell off the risk to
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reinsurance companies. Those are the ones that are going to get nailed, I
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mean nailed, and it's this is no small deal. Remember the Costa Concordia
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that went to ground near the Italian Island in twenty twelve. Thirty two people
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died in the incident. The insurers and the reinsurers paid over two billion dollars
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in claims and there was no port involved. Where city is shut down,
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I mean it is. Well, it's gonna get very expensive. There's gonna
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be one of the biggest maritime disasters. Not so much the bridge collapse itself.
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There have been far worse maritime disasters. It's the financial part of it
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what's going on. And of course those poor souls that died on the bridge,
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which well we're gonna do it down at the bottom of the hour,
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I'm going to talk more about what happened, why they were looking so long
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and they were calling it a rescue operation. Hours and hours afterwards, going
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to talk to Jim Keeney about that. Now, let's go to Florida.
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Yesterday I talked to Rich Demurow about this legislation in Florida that was just signed,
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and this is You've got Ron de Sant to sign this, and he's
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gone back and forth on this prohibiting people kids under fourteen of age from even
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having social media accounts, whether parenial consents involved at all. If you're fourteen
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or under, you don't have a social media account. And the law requires
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social media companies to close accounts believed to be used by miners under that age,
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cancel accounts of miners fourteen or fifteen years old at the quest of the
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parents, and delete all information from these accounts. Miners who are fourteen or
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fifteen can obtain an account with parental consent, so under fourteen doesn't matter.
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No accounts fourteen to fifteen parental consent. Over sixteen wide open. You can
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have all the accounts you want. Now. There are been other states that
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have done the same thing, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah, banning miners from
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using social media platforms without parental consent. All have failed First Amendment. The
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trade group that involved TikTok Mati platforms have sued in all three states. One
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injunctions. Montana bill banning TikTok blocked by a federal judge on First Amendment grounds.
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Even earlier this Governor Rohan DeSantis a floor vetoed a similar bill that banned
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minors under sixteen from using social media. Now is minors under fourteen is what
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he did sign off on. And so now we have and this is the
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fun part, and that is the major two things. First of all,
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how do you verify? Are you fourteen? Yes? I am? Are
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you sixteen or seventeen? Yes I am. Now, you go into a
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bar when you're eighteen, you have to have fake ID. You go online
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and you go on TikTok. All you do is say yeah, I'm eighteen.
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How do they check it? How do they know? Right, it's
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like thermos bottles. They keep liquids hot and they keep liquids cold, and
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how does it know. That's the entire point here. So that's one question
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now that can be answered I think with technology. Not that I'm a technology,
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Maven. But I've interviewed enough people to know that with AI and database
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bases out there where, these companies can know everything about you. Every place
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you've lived, will live, where you shop, when you shop, the
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kind of shopping you do, when you go for discounts, I mean all
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of it. They have all the information, your age, your address.
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It's is it that hard to put together the data that you're under fourteen?
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By the very way you use TikTok things you have said, and then you
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have someone that has okay, we have a pretty good idea. Boom,
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you're done. Okay. That's one issue. How do they know? I
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think they can know technologically speaking. The other one are these major platforms that
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say we agree and we are doing everything to protect minors, and look at
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our alg rhythms, look at our policy, look at the number of people
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we employ to oversee what's going on. Now. Is there a little bit
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of a conflict there? Oh? I don't think so. Why is that?
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Well, because they're telling us they're doing everything because they agree philosophically kids
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under fourteen shouldn't have their own their own accounts. How much money do you
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think they make with kids under fourteen? You don't think that's the market.
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And what is the entire point of social media and the social media companies to
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get as many people to use the platform as often as possible, for as
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long as possible, buy through using the platform to find out information about what
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they want to buy and not buy. And so these companies when they say,
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oh, no, no, no, we think it's terrible that kids under fourteen, fifteen or sixteen should be monitored and should be limited. Does
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that sound like a crop to you? Why don't they just have a government
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issue ID of some kind. Well, but then what do you what if
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you have to register at a certain because that's right, because that we don't
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do that in America. We don't have government federal government IDs. We just
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don't do that. Why is social media a right when driving a car is
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not? Social media is not a right? Okay, no, you don't
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have a right to You don't have a right to drive a car at fourteen. No. But what I'm saying if if driving a car is not a
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right in the United States, it does not have to be licensed and you
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have to get via social media, you have to be of age. Yeah,
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why is it any different? Why not it have plenty different because you've
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got a First Amendment issue as far as getting information, disseminating information. You
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don't have a fundamental right to drive a car, and it is very different.
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And on top of that, a national ID is anethema to the United
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States as a free society. That's why we don't we do in California.
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We have IDs California and you have to have either a driver's license or an
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ID card that you have to have, although that was attack too, and
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the courts held that you can't force someone to do that. Well, we're
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fans of green cards. Yeah, we are real ones, that's true.
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So I am having this fight with my daughters saying they should be banned from
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having social media accounts. They're twenty eight, but they're really not. I
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mean, you know them, tell me they're over fourteen years old, Neil,
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I plead the fifth. Yeah, okay, I love the girls.
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I plead the fifth, not arguing that it's just they're not going to reach
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their chronological age for decades. All right, now, I want to go
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back to the Baltimore Bridge collapse we know about. You've seen the video of
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the ship hitting that support column and the entire bridge collapsing, and it's just
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it's kind of crazy. And I want to talk about those six people that
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are now unaccounted for construction workers that fell into the water essensibly although they don't
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know. Jim Keeney is with this doctor, Jim who is an er doctor.
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So Jim has particular expertise in something like this. Jim, good morning,
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Good morning. Okay, Now for the record, and I want to
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point this out, Jim is very much has a lot of good general knowledge
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about all things medical, but this is his particular specialty. I mean,
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he can answer practological questions pretty well. What he can answer primarily well is
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when these people are brought into the er mass casualties, and this is what
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he does. So let's start talking about You have people that are in the
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water, have fallen down, you know, maybe one hundred feet maybe two
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hundred feet above the water, and for hours they were looking for survivors.
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Did that make any sense? Yeah? I mean I think you have to
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give everyone the benefit of the doubt. You got a fully ramped up you
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know, rescue team, search and rescue team out there, multiple teams,
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and I think you have to just continue to search, you know, as
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long as you possibly can. Yeall, you know, I can tell you
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from the Haiti earthquake, we found people under rubble two weeks after the earthquake,
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and I mean that seemed so far beyond, but they brought us.
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It brought us two twins that had been buried under the rubble for two weeks
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with their mother. They believe that, you know, they were probably still
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breastfeeding on the momb for a while. And as more of it as that
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is, the two twins survived and did very well well. So so you
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know, you just kind of give everybody the benefit of the doubt in search as long as you can. But you're right, I mean, being in
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water in the forties forty degrees, you're likely to succumb to hypothermia within the
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first hour or so at the most. Okay, by the way, now
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I'm not a doctor, obviously, although I play one on radio. It's
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a little tough for the last two weeks underwater, isn't it. Yeah?
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It is, Bill, very tough, very tough. Just you never know,
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right, are these people really underwater? They loaded down? I know
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you're right taking them somewhere, you know that. My point is all kinds
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of weird stuff can happen where people survive, and you've heard stories of survival
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that are insane, So of course you're going to just go you know,
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ten times what you think somebody can survive, and keep looking. Okay,
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you find a body, if you find it, If you find the bodies,
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then it's over right, and you know that they haven't survived. Okay.
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But the reason I ask is it probably went on for a day looking
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for survivors and then its switched over to recovery, and it just seemed like
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a very long time. But you have a point that if it's one out
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of a thousand, you have to go for it. And so forty degree
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temperature in the water, you have about an hour to survive. And I'm
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assuming that obviously the colder it is the quicker that you succumb. For example,
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if you're in the North Sea, you're looking falling over water, you're
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talking about minutes before you die. I have that, yeah. But then
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when it gets that cold, though, that you got the advantage that if
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you cool very quickly and you go into the severe hypothermia where that your whole
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body shuts down. There's been cases right where people fall into frozen lakes.
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They're basically a frozen popsicle, and we saw them out and can get their
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heart started again, and they recover, especially children, because children have a
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better surface you know, the surface area ratio to their body masks, and
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so they cool there internally, they cool much quicker, and then so everything
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kind of cools down fast before any damage is done, and then we can
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revive them. All right, So you are in the er. All the
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television shows that I have seen, the phone call comes in, someone yells
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mass casualties, and everybody scrambles in the er and brings out the gurneyes and
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you know all that drama. What actually happens if that, well, I
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mean it kind of it does happen like that in the hospital, But the
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hospital isn't the central kind of nerve center of that whole thing. We're just
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a peripheral part of it. There's what we use. And all these agencies
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use incident command structure. So an incident command structure is a common language,
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it's a common way of communicating, and it's a common structure, so you'd
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know you know who to ask for. You can walk into the command center
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and say who's the incident commander? And everybody knows what that is. I
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listened actually to the radio transmission and it's just fascinating to me. It's just
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gibberish, I think for most people, but it's fascinating to me to hear
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the Baltimore City Fire Department basically set up their incident command within the first few
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minutes of this occurring, and the battalion chief identifying himself as the incident commander,
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explaining to everyone where he would be setting up an incident command location,
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and then you know, designating different units for different areas, and then with
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that common you know, radio signal that they were using for the incident command,
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they then peel off all the different resources, either the ground fire department,
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the police, the marine elements, the air elements, and then the
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hospitals and then they can all communicate that way. What they do is they
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communicate amongst themselves on their own channels. Then they come back to the command
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channel to coordinate the hospital's part of that. The hospital will then be called
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to be told we have X number of victims, how many are you capable
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of receiving and in what timeframe? They'll do that across one of the coordinators
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will do that and call all the local hospitals to identify who can receive what,
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and then you stand by as a hospital. Now you've given them what
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you can receive, and you just wait and see what shows up at your
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door. Now, oftentimes you get a call ahead of time, but sometimes
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you don't. Sometimes they just show up. Now, the germination of whether
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you can help or not, or someone needs surgery, I'm assuming is done
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by the paramedics and you're called in advance gunshot wound to the belly or profuse
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bleeding out of the head. Are you told? That information? Very basic?
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So usually on a nine to one one call, we would get a
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lot of information about the patient and they have a full workup that they do.
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But in a multi casualty incident, we go to a triaging system and
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you have the walking wounded. You then have just a couple other categories,
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so we only know what category they're in, and then we know that they
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may require trauma or whatever. So if it's a shooting and they'll identify that
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it's a trauma victim, then we'll be set up in the trauma room for
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example, as opposed to somebody with hypothermia, where we may be set up
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in a regular er critical care room and then sometimes they're able to communicate,
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sometimes they're not. And it's one of those things where we all understand there's
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a lot going on, they don't have time to do all of the normal
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communication, and we just all have to be ready. So it is a
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lot like what you see on TV in terms of you. You just see
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it from a different perspective, and it's only a one sided perspective. It's
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pretty rare that they actually show that. To me, the real interesting part,
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which is the incident command. Okay, and I've been to ers,
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most of us have, and I am assuming when someone comes in with a
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gunshot wounded a head and the brains are spilling out, that only becomes a
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forty minute wait in the waiting room. Do I have that right? Yeah?
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Something like that. Horrible. This is horrible. I know you and
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I have spent talking about where medicine has gone and the uh well you talked
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about how the er has become the place where people unfortunately go to for basic
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health care. And have you been involved in any of these many of these
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Oh yeah, sure, these happen on a regular basis. So you know,
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a car accident where you've got more than three victims, they're going to
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do an MCI, which is a multi casualty incident, you know, like
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you said, assault where somebody's you know, stabbing or shooting multiple people,
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those type of things. So they happen relatively frequently. A train accident,
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a bus accident, Okay, and I'm assuming that the chief of the er
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then assigns where someone goes and assigns you you're going to deal with patient A.
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You're going to be in Bay one or two or three. Is that
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what happens? Yeah, And again that depends on how far through the hospital
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we expect this emergency to carry. So if it's a car accident where we
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have like five or six car victims, then we will that the trauma service
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is really put into high gear. The oars are notified, the critical care
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areas of the hospital are notified, and we prepare for the person to go
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from the er to the operating room for definitive you know, intervention, and
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then to an ICU. So all that that whole pathways laid out. If
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it's something like COVID, which you know, are something that's going to go
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on for days or weeks you know, say it's an earthquake or a hurricane
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or something like that. Well, now we're going to get all the way up to We'll set up an incident command within the hospital, so our own
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local incident command, and then we will coordinate with how are we going to
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staff this, How are we going to you know, not just for the next few hours, but for the next few day, days or weeks.
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How are we going to continue this? Fascinating Jim? That is I mean,
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I love the way you tell it and how how complicated it is at
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the same time how easy it is. Jim. Thank you. We'll talk
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again next Wednesday. All right, all right, take care. I have
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a good one, doctor Jim Keeney, who is our er doc. And
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so we're done. Finish Finney. Tomorrow morning we come back. We start
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with amy wake up call at five o'clock and then the rest of us come
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aboard. The rest of us being Neil, Amy stays and and comes aboard,
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but Amy Ann works the wake up call also she does, so the
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only one who joins is oh and kno works the wake up call. Yes,
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so that just means Neil and me we get things warmed up ready for
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you. To go, good good, We're lazy bastards. We are tomorrow
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starting at five, and then Neil and I do our thing. This is
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KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to
24:04
the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday six am to nine
24:08
am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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