Riding Along with Bangkok's 'Body Snatchers'

Hatchaya Aungaumrung calmly stared out the window as the small ambulance careened down an elevated highway in northern Bangkok. Somewhere out there was another accident, the second call of the night in a country where more people die in traffic accidents per-capita than nearly anywhere else on earth. More than 5,000 people have already died in traffic accidents nationwide this year. By the end of the year, the death toll typically climbs in excess of 20,000.

The ambulance suddenly came to a stop. Outside, a black Toyota Camry had smashed straight into a cement barrier running between the lanes. The car was totaled, its front end badly damaged, oil leaking onto the asphalt. The driver was sitting on the curb with his head in his lap. There was blood on his striped button-down shirt from a split lip.

"When we get out, if someone at the accident scene is dead, please don't take too many photos of their face," Hatchaya told me before we stepped out onto the streets.

Hatchaya, who prefers the nickname Paw, is a member of the all-volunteer Ruamkatanyu Foundation ambulance corps.—a Buddhist charity that provides free emergency medical care to the residents of Bangkok. The Thai capital has only 150 official ambulances in a city about the same size as Vancouver, but with nearly five million more people. Ruamkatanyu serves as a backup to the city's overburdened hospital-run ambulance fleet, often arriving first on the scene to provide triage or, all too often, a free trip to the morgue.

It's earned Ruamkatanyu an unenviable nickname: the Bangkok Body Snatchers. I spent two nights on the streets with the body snatchers to try and understand the human cost of the country's terrible traffic safety record. By the end I understood why the volunteer corps. were saddled with such a terrible nickname. Death, it seemed, was all to easy to find on the streets of Bangkok.

My night with the ambulance corps. began at their "home base"—a parking lot underneath a highway overpass. The EMTs were sitting in a circle, munching on peanuts and dried mango slices while they waited for the next call. We spent much of the night waiting. Sometimes hours would pass between calls. Other times the calls would be nonstop, typically peaking on weekend nights when the bars started to let out.

Alcohol, traffic, and motorbikes are a deadly mix in Thailand. Twenty six percent of all road deaths in the country are alcohol related. Sometimes the carnage spills over to the EMTs themselves. Last months, four EMTs were killed by a drunk driver while responding to an accident in Thailand's southern Trang province. Other times, people threaten to attack the EMTs when they try to intervene in bar brawls or help the victims of alcohol-fueled violence.

Later we arrived on the scene of another accident. A family of three riding a single motorbike had crashed. The woman was laying on her back, conscious but badly injured. Her husband was bleeding from cuts and scrapes on his arm as he kneeled next to his wife. Their child, a young boy who couldn't have been any older than eight, was already in the arms of an EMT. The boy was wailing in agony with a broken leg.

The paramedics were screaming instructions over the din of traffic. Once they ensured that the mother and child were stable, the two were rushed to the nearest hospital. I rode in the back with the woman who was clearly shaken. She asked if her child was going to the same hospital. The paramedics told her yes, and only then did she lean back and try to calm down.

The Ruamkatanyu volunteers calmly worked on her leg. I turned around and watched the driver navigate Bangkok's congested streets with ease. It reminded me of a conversation I had with the volunteer corps.' deputy chief Noppadon Sitongkhum a few weeks back when I was first asking to do the ride along. I asked him what motivated the volunteers to show up and take such risks night after night.

"I feel that I receive some merit from doing this kind of work," Noppadon told me. "Personally nothing is difficult for me, even rotting bodies or broken limbs. Everyone here is willing to be here. They are all volunteers. This jobs isn't difficult if you have the right kind of attitude."

But this casual professionalism came with time, Noppadon told me. When he first started to volunteer with Ruamkatanyu, the work left him nervous and frazzled. He questioned what to do with a dead body, or how to calm an injured patient enough so they could be safely moved to the back of an ambulance.

"The most difficult thing as a volunteer was not being able to nurse an injured person right away," he told me. "For example, the process of moving an injured person is very delicate. You have to stay calm and very carefully lift and move the body otherwise the person could become paralyzed.

"When I had the chance to come and work here, I just felt nervous about everything from nursing an injured person to handling a dead body. My first feelings were, 'What? I have to do all these things?'

"Nowadays, there are many standard procedures to follow. For example, in the case that there is a dead body on the scene, we cannot touch or contaminate the scene at all as it might affect the investigation."

What to do with a dead body turned out to be an important lesson. The volunteers know that it's impossible to save everyone, and plenty of times they arrive on the scene to find a victim who has already passed on. This happened twice during my two nights with them and it left me feeling shaken and depressed.

The first time we arrived at a dilapidated abandoned market to find a man who appeared to have died from an overdose. The market was down a random alley next to two brothels. His body was found by one of the women, who called the police. The police then sent in the body snatchers to collect the corpse and transport him to the morgue.

It was hard to ignore the sense of loneliness in the room. All of the man's belongings were spread out under a concrete table. No one had bothered to claim his body and if the police couldn't match his fingerprints with an ID, he would remain alone.

Later, on one of the last calls of my second night out, we arrived at the scene of a motorbike accident to find a man's body lying in the street. Someone had already covered him with a sheet. His motorbike was on its side some 18 meters away. The paramedics said he must've nodded off to sleep while driving drunk and slammed into the concrete barrier. The collision likely broke his neck, killing him instantly, the paramedics told me. His helmet was intact and there was little blood. Again, the paramedics were forced to transport a person they would've rather saved.

It hit close to home. I have seen dead bodies before, but this was still hard to process. The man and I were about the same age. I couldn't help but think that somewhere he had someone waiting up late for his return. It was a reminder of how delicate life can be, that sometimes the choices we make can end it all in an instant.

It was a scene like this that drove Paw to volunteer in the first place. She told me that her boyfriend had died in a traffic accident a year ago. The volunteer ambulance corps. arrived to offer aid, but his injuries were too grave, she explained.

"I volunteered because I lost a loved one," she told me. "I don't want that to ever happen to me again, or anyone else."

But on streets as deadly as these, the work is never done.