You’ve seen it in the movies and on TV: Someone hurt in a car wreck is strapped to a rigid backboard and rushed to the hospital by ambulance or aboard a rescue helicopter. That’s how firefighters, paramedics and others have approached patients with suspected spinal injury since the nation’s modern fire-based EMS system began some 50 years ago. But that doesn’t happen in Whatcom County, where EMS workers are among the first in the nation to reject traditional spinal immobilization techniques – a neck brace and backboard – in favor of a device called a vacuum mattress or full-body vacuum splint.