The thing is that most of us will live out our entire lives without ever experiencing a real life crisis situation, and regardless of how so many of us are absolutely certain that we would stay calm, not panic, and save everybody from imminent danger; the fact is that most of us have no idea what we would do in a situation like that with or without proper training. You are correct that EMTs are a rare breed and I've known a few, and I know that not everyone is cut out to do that job.
The closest thing that I've experienced to a crisis happened to me about 10 years ago. At the time I was working for an auto parts manufacturer And one day I was on my back from break, and I just happened to see a flaming piece of debris fall from the ceiling in one of the work cells so I looked up and I saw a big fire in a ceiling exhaust from being congested with soot. I had no idea where the nearest fire alarm was so I got on the intercom and called for help. The supervisor and the maintenance techs very quickly got a ladder and a genie lift to start extinguishing the fire (they had robotic welders so occasional fire fighting was not unusual, but this fire was pretty bad. Shortly after somebody hit the alarm and people started evacuating. And just before I was getting ready to leave, I handed the maintenance guys 2 more fire extinguishers to send up the ladder which was when I noticed a skid with oil drums (some of which were flammable and WD-40 was in one of them) that were dangerously close to where the flaming debris was falling and starting small fires on the floor. Not only that, but they were opened and had the rotary pumps sticking out through the top. Now the thing is that these drums were in a new work cell that was being built by the maintenance dept which had no room for a forklift to get inside. So the only way to get these out was with a hand jack which was in the oil room at the other end of the building (which is where the oil drums belonged in the first place). So I and another employee got the people who were still evacuating to stop walking through there and then I got on a forklift and rammed into a wall of newly contructed wire mesh partitions (
example) to knock them down and make room for the forklift to get in there and get the skid and get it out of there.
And after what seemed like a long time (but probably not a long time), the fire dept arrived just as the fire was put out.
The next day there was a meeting that myself, the shift supervisor and maintenance dept had to attend with Mr. Safety and the plant manager.
Of course the first criticism was the fact that we stayed and extinguished the fire when we should have left it to the fire dept which was legitimate. I tried to point out that I was just handing them fire extinguishers on my way out and intended to evacuate, but they didn't want to hear that. And according to the supervisor and maintenance that wasn't even the first time that exhaust caught fire and they have seen it worse than what we had seen it that day.
After this part of the conversation was over, the criticism turned directly to me for what I did.
But what was weird was that I didn't remember knocking those walls down to get to the oil containers, but I remember everything else pretty well. But everybody else said that I did, and that I even hit the walls head on from the corner so it was a conscious and intentional act. They obviously had to be moved to get a forklift in there so there was no way around it. I knocked those walls over.
Management said that they were glad that I had noticed the hazard and took quick action and they weren't going to discipline me..... (yet). But of course they had to find something wrong and suggested that I should have ran to the other end of the building got the hand jack run back and get the skid out that way or move some 55 gallon and 5 gallon containers by hand away from the hazard. This discussion went back and fourth and they just refused to accept how absurd their suggestions were. They would go back and criticize maintenance again, and then go back to me for awhile. I even recall them saying I could have found a piece of cardboard to throw on top of them and leave. This went on for a good while and people were getting noticeably irritated and I just decided that these guys were hell bent on pointing the finger and blaming someone somehow because it's really all they know how to do.
So in a particularly impolite manner, I suggested that maybe we should make sure the ceiling exhausts are cleaned and that oil drums should stay in the oil room where they belong and that fire alarms should be visibly marked from a distance so everyone knows where they are even if it's their first day and maybe would could prevent potential disasters before they happen instead of looking for scapegoats after the fact.
And that was the end of the conversation.... And I was wrote up for disrespecting management. And once they cleaned everything up, that skid with oil drums on it.... Found it's way right back to where it was . This was because maintenance didn't feel like going back and fourth to the oil room so they would get a skid of the oil products that they needed and leave it wherever they happened to be working on a project until it was finished.
Now that was a long post, and it's still a far cry from a jumbo jet crash, but I learned some very important things from that situation.
One thing is how our minds seem to react to crises and how we seem to remember something different than what actually happened. I was focused on getting the oil away from the fire, so that's all I remember. Maintenance was concerned with extinguishing the fire, so they didn't take notice to the skid of oil that was beneath them and well within their sight which one of them very well could have put there in the first place. And evacuation isn't on any of their minds as long as they had someone was there handing them another fire extinguisher.
I think it's the same psychological principal that causes people to have vastly different personal accounts of the same exact event.
There's a very good chance that most of those EMTs had no idea that a person was on the ground despite walking past her numerous times. Or even presumed that she was dead because whoever carried her out there didn't see to it that she got medical attention. Their focus was on the plane and the rest of the passengers and tragically, she just wasn't in the picture.
Life isn't a movie and I think that people have unreasonable expectations that every crisis will be handled smoothly and professionally when in reality; even the best of the best drop the ball. Some of the most experienced and distinguished pilots have crashed jumbo jets because they panicked in an emergency and simply forgot to fly the plane.
The internet is full of judgmental pricks who where born grown up knowing everything who never made a mistake in their entire lives because they're the only ones who know how to do anything right because everybody else is wrong. I don't think the emergency personnel got together collectively decided to ignore that girl's needs and run over her head. I think they were human beings who were doing their jobs the best that they could with what they had and made a very tragic mistake in the process.
Now that was a really long post which means nobody will ever read it lol.