Asheville, North Carolina Asheville Fire & Rescue, 7 Oct 2015

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From YouTube: City Scoop - October 7, 2015

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October 7, 2015
Episode 002 of City Scoop features Kelley Klope, Public Information Officer for the Asheville Fire Department, discussing why fire trucks are dispatched on emergency medical calls.

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Hi I'm Kelly cloak public information officer for the Asheville fire department and today, I hope to answer a very common question often asked of our firefighters, and that is why our fire trucks dispatched an ems calls emergency medical calls. We work as a team here in Asheville, so it's not like. Oh we're racing to get to the scene to beat the paramedics. We want to get there as quick as possible if their first and they realize they don't need a fire truck.

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Then they will actually dispatch called dispatchers, say: hey, we've got this taken care of, you can cancel the fire truck, and so we will go back in service and be ready for the next call. You may have just three to five ambulances within the city limits during a given day and they may be on other calls or the distance of travel may be greater. We have roughly 17 different fire trucks that we send on our calls and so obviously we're going to get there a lot quicker.

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The majority of the time when dispatcher receives a 911 call emergency medical call they're going to send both types of trucks. So that whoever arrives on the scene first can start that patient care.

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But the great thing is is that we work as a team, no matter who gets there first starts that initial patient care and then, if that patient needs to be transported, then they're obviously going to be transported quicker and we again can assist in that a firefighter can actually drive an ambulance in as the paramedics work that patient to the hospital, all of our personnel and our fire trucks are emergency medical technicians. They are certified and they have continuing ed hours each year to maintain that certification.

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So they are able to administer patient care immediately and hopefully get that patient prepared if they need to travel by ambulance. So when the ambulance gets there, that is a lot quicker process. Sometimes, when people call 911, they may not always know the true emergency. Somebody may call in a certain type of situation, and when we get on the scene, it's a little more advanced than they. Let us know having a fire truck. There means that we have additional equipment, not just personal care, but some type of rescue equipment.

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The fire truck has more equipment, obviously for any type of rescue that we may encounter, or any other type of incident that we may encounter. That was not described them phone, so bringing that fire truck means we're not only bringing highly trained personnel we're also bringing additional equipment that, hopefully, we could handle. Whatever situation we may encounter scream for help from a window. You're gonna have to access from the rooftop.

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All of our firefighters are not just firefighters, anymore, they're, also EMT and they're also trained in a lot of different rescue scenarios such as high angle confined space, swift, water rescue, which we know is important around here.

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We have dive and we have an excellent hazmat group, so knowing that our firefighters are skilled in so many ways can assure our citizens that when you call 911 you're going to get the best service possible, we are an accredited agency, which means not only are we the best that we can be today, but we are going to continue to improve ourselves to get better and better each year being accredited means that you have again the most highly trained personnel and the best resources on those trucks.

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When we respond to you in the past, the Asheville Fire Department, along with fire stations across the country, we tried using what's called a quick response vehicle and that's a smaller vehicle that we would send. Instead of the larger truck to certain ems calls and those q RVs, we used for a while hoping to reduce costs to the citizens and we sent those trucks out.

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Instead of sending the ladder truck, we would send that crew on a smaller vehicle to emergency medical calls, but what we did find out is that wasn't cost-effective, actually because having to equip that truck having to maintain that truck and having to replace that truck every five to eight years meant that in the long run, that's going to add extra expense.

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So we've gone back to sending our basic fire trucks our ladder, our engines, our squads, whatever it is to that 911 call again we work as a team, because our ultimate goal is to save lives and provide the best patient care possible. I hope I've been able to answer some of your questions, especially when it pertains to why do they send fire on emergency medical calls? Thank you.

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