Surge in injuries from last week’s hard freeze

Most South Mississippians just aren’t used to having to deal with the hazards that come with frigid winter weather.
Last week’s hard freeze sent hundreds to the emergency rooms and clinics have been full of patients injured from falling on the ice.
Gulfport resident Susan Sales has been depending on crutches to get around the past few days after last week’s hard freeze landed her in the hospital. “So dangerous, so scary.”
Sales says she was walking out of a restaurant Thursday when it happened. “I slipped out from under myself, fell on my backside. My leg hit the curb, the concrete, and my head hit the back of the concrete.”
Doctors at local clinics say they’ve been busy with an influx of patients, many of them complaining of injuries sustained during last week’s icy conditions. Dr. Lance Johansen said, “Most people have broken their wrist, their shoulder, and their hip. Some patients have broken their ankle or their knee.”
Dr. Lance Johansen says on Monday he performed back to back surgeries due to ice related injuries sustained mostly by elderly patients who got hurt. Dr. Johansen says the black ice that formed during the hard freeze is mostly to blame. “An 87-year-old man is going to get in his car and he didn’t know there was any ice at all and he fell down and broke his shoulder and his knee.”
Last week, workers laid salt down on roadways and bridges while many local businesses didn’t take safety precautions when ice accumulated. “Especially eating places where they had so many people and big stores that they would put some salt down or something that would help prevent some of it,” said Sales.
“If patients would have had on some shoes that had more traction that would have helped and then I would recommend that everyone that does this has a person that know where they are in case they fall they can get help,” said Dr. Johansen.