First Responders Keep Dream Vacations From Becoming Nightmares
By Clayton Wallace, Condo Owner Magazine, Volume 18, Issue 2 (Spring 2014)
For condo owners and their guests, a medical emergency can turn a glorious getaway at the beach from a dream vacation to a nightmare. This fact is not lost on first responders along the Northwest Florida and Alabama Gulf Coast, and first responders are quick to point out that although the cities along the gulf coast are not as large as the hometown cities of many visitors, their response to emergency situations are as good as those found in larger metropolitan areas.
According to fire department personnel from Panama City Beach to Gulf Shores, the vast majority of fire department responders are not only trained in fire safety, but also trained to offer medical assistance to victims of medical emergencies.
Joe Cocco is a Fire Captain with Panama City Beach Fire Rescue. “We have EMT’s and paramedics on staff here,” he said. “The vast majority of calls we respond to are medical in nature, and we’re able to administer emergency medical procedures until the ambulance arrives.”
Phil Metz of the Destin Fire Department echoed Cocco. “Virtually every fire department in Okaloosa County is also an emergency medical services first responder,” he said. “If you dial 911 in an emergency you’ll get a fire crew, and we’re almost always there before an ambulance arrives. Our crews are trained to stabilize medical conditions until the ambulance gets there.”
Gulf Shores Fire Chief Hartley Brokenshaw said the same holds true along the Alabama Gulf Coast. Firefighters in both Orange Beach and Gulf Shores have emergency medical training to treat and/or stabilize emergency cases until an ambulance arrives.
Unanimously, the fire department personnel said their departments are the first to arrive on the scene in almost all emergencies. “We provide a necessary safety net until the ambulance arrives,” Metz said. “There’s an unwritten national standard of an eight minute response time from the time a 911 call is made to the time ambulances should arrive. We’re there sooner than eight minutes, and many times that response time is the difference between life and death.”
Brokenshaw said a persistent story he hears in the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach area is that there’s only one ambulance that services the area, which covers approximately 30 miles of beachfront from Perdido Key to Fort Morgan. He said on the surface that fact may be true, but that’s not the whole story.
“MedStar provides transport for medical emergencies, and their office for the area is located near the Jack Edwards Airport, which allows for quick access to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. It’s true that there is usually only one ambulance at the location at any given time, but as soon as a 911 call comes in that requires a response from that ambulance, another ambulance is already on its way down to the airport from a secondary location less than five miles away,” Brokenshaw said. “So if another call comes in while the first ambulance is away, the second ambulance is ready to take the call.”
According to Mike Sandell of MedStar, the company has as many as 20 ambulances in service at a time, and they all operate in this manner. When one unit has to leave its base to respond, another unit is on its way to replace the first. “It’s almost like a stream of ambulances,” Brokenshaw said. “It hasn’t happened yet, but if for some reason MedStar can’t get their personnel to a scene, the cities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach each have an ambulance that can be utilized as transport vehicles to the hospital.”
According to Brokenshaw, in his 36 years with the department, the most ambulances that he recalls being called to the scene of an accident were two. “We may have had an instance or two when three showed up, but if something is that critical, we’ll usually call the Life Flight helicopter from Baptist Hospital in Pensacola,” he said.
Metz said Okaloosa County operates the ambulance service in his district and Cocco said Bay County runs the ambulance service in his district. Metz said typically the county has 10 ambulances on the road at a given time and have run as many as 12.
Brokenshaw said when planning a vacation, most people take for granted that should an emergency occur, first responders will be quick to the scene and highly trained in their jobs. “We strive to make that concern reality,” he said.
“Most people don’t think about us too much,” Cocco said. “That is – until they need us.”
“It certainly helps that we have emergency personnel with advanced life support training on our staff that are here all the time,” Metz said. “Our fire department is very experienced and conscientious. If you dial 911 in an emergency, you’ll get a fire crew.”
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