The Hospital Map Book Project
The 110-year-old bridge over the Altamaha River, Wayne County, Ga., scene of the horrific Midnight Rider tragedy. Photo is from the Hollywood Reporter article.
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Many years, and many, MANY maps ago, I worked on set. Twice in three years we had to send crew members to the Emergency Room. Nothing major thank goodness, just an allegeric reaction to a bee sting and a twisted ankle thanks to a misstep from a lift gate. Both of these crew were driven to the hospital by PAs. They both returned to work immediately and were just fine.
On February 20th, 2014 a tragedy occurred on a set in a little-filmed area of Mid Georgia. The Hollywood Reporter has a write up of what occurred. It's available here. If you're unfamiliar with what led to the accident that cost a 27 year old Camera Assistant her life and injured another seven crew members please take the time to read about it. Please note that we did not work on Midnight Rider.
Our first reaction was sorrow. Anyone who's worked in the film industry has almost certainly been on the set of low budget, guerilla shoots and taken risks. The events of February 20th, 2014 were especially egregious but accidents happen even on the safest of sets.
Our second reaction was, how can we help?
Couple facts: Doctortown, GA is nearly empty. There's one nearby hospital to the train bridge; it's roughly 6.3 Miles southwest, in the town of Jesup, GA, population ~10,000.
Speculation: very few crew were locals - it's too small of a town to support trained crew. As a small town there would be precious few ambulances, and those available would be needed by the most severely injured.
It's reasonable to believe that uninjured crew would drive their lesser-injured colleagues to the nearby hospital in their own cars, rather than wait for distant ambulances to respond. The drivers were likely not from the area. They just witnessed a terrible accident; panic was probably in order. Perhaps they took the time to plug the hospital into Waze (it existed then), or another smartphone mapping app. But what if they didn't have phone reception? Doctortown, GA may be well covered by phone service, but where the next accident of this kind occurs may be in worse shape.
We could help to tamp down that panic. A map to the nearest hospital would have been a great asset on Feb 20th for the drivers, if only to ensure them of which direction they needed to go.
So, we looked at our data. We identified where most of our customers film, singled out the hospitals in these areas that offer 24/7 Emergency service, and set to work. We started this in 2014. It's now 2020.
This project was a massive amount of work. They're a different beast than a Location Map, different specs. It was a process.
Download the PDF (be warned, it's over 500 pages thanks to the vast area that we provide map service to, and to legal notices), then tuck it away on your hard drive. On your next job go ahead and open it up, print out a map to your nearest hospital, and set it in your kit. If something happens, you're ready to hand off a map.
It's free.
We hope that you'll never need it.