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Car crash attests to Warren’s ambulance-response problems
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
When Crystal Lough’s 1998 Oldsmobile was rear-ended Wednesday afternoon on Youngstown Road near the Trumbull County Board of Elections, it caused extensive damage to the car.
Though her sons — Landon, 18 months, and Bryce, 21/2 — were in the back strapped into car seats and appeared to be OK, she still was concerned.
She called 911 from her cell phone about 4:10 p.m. And although a police officer arrived about five minutes later, and firefighters were there about 10 minutes later, it took until about 4:35 p.m. — 25 minutes after her call — for an ambulance from Howland to arrive.
Warren 911 records say Lough, her boys and her mother were taken at 4:43 p.m. to St. Joseph Health Center.
“The guy told me Warren was busy, all the ambulances were busy at the same time,” Crystal’s mother, Crystal Richmond, said of the Warren policeman and firefighter who waited with the family for the ambulance.
“It’s a good thing they [her grandsons] weren’t bleeding to death,” Richmond said Thursday from her home in Warren Township.
In fact, the ambulance company under contract with the city of Warren to provide ambulance service — Med Star EMS and Transport — was so tied up that it was unable to respond to three ambulance calls Wednesday afternoon between 4:03 p.m. and 4:28 p.m.
In addition to the Lough crash, Med Star was unable to send an ambulance to a call of a man shot in the chest on Southern Boulevard Northwest and a minor emergency on Tod Avenue Northwest.
An ambulance from Lane LifeTrans Paramedics responded to the gunshot wound, which turned out to be a suicide, and Warren Township firefighters responded to the minor emergency on Tod Avenue.
Warren firefighters also responded to all three calls because the city has unwritten agreements with the Howland and Warren township fire departments that Warren firefighters will respond to all calls in Warren to which the Warren Township and Howland Township ambulances go.
The Warren Fire Department sent firefighters to the gunshot call answered by Lane LifeTrans because Warren firefighters knew that Med Star didn’t have an ambulance to send and was searching for another ambulance company to take the call, said Ken Nussle, fire chief.
But what concerns Warren firefighters is that because its department doesn’t provide ambulance services, and few of its employees are trained to provide medical care, they are of relatively little help at such calls.
“The problem is feeling helpless at times,” Nussle said.
Nussle added that because his department does not run an EMS service such as most paid fire departments, it isn’t authorized to provide such service and could run into liability problems for providing medical care under such circumstances.
Nussle said city officials had a meeting with Joe Robinson, owner of Med Star, a couple of months ago after noticing that Med Star was not responding to an increasing number of calls.
“Joe [Robinson] said he wanted to put another ambulance on, but he couldn’t afford to,” Nussle said.
Robinson was not available to comment Thursday and Friday. A woman at Med Star, who declined to provide her name, said she was an officer of the company.
“In this day in Warren, where the majority of people don’t have insurance, we’re doing the best we can,” she said, explaining that a population without insurance or a job is a poor source of revenue for an ambulance company.
To make a profit, Med Star has to operate as lean as possible, which means sometimes Med Star is “pulling [employees] out of the hospital [to get to another EMS call], and they haven’t even finished their paperwork yet” from the previous call, she said.
In the case of the shooting victim Wednesday, Lane Life Trans of Niles was the third ambulance company Med Star called that afternoon for help because Action Ambulance and Clemente McKay of Warren also were too busy to take the call, she said.
“What people have to remember is we’re in a tough economy. We’re trying to survive,” she said, adding that police officers, firefighters and EMS workers all deserve thanks for “doing more with less” during these tough economic times.
Warren Police Chief Tim Bowers said the relationship with Med Star is “not working as well as I’d like,” adding, “All I know is when I need an ambulance, I need one, and when they say they don’t have one, that’s unacceptable, and it happens too often. By contract, they [Med Star] are supposed to respond, but what do you do about a it?”
Marc Titus, president of the union representing Warren’s firefighters, said the proposal he and his colleagues made in January 2009 to have the Warren Fire Department provide EMS service again after about 25 years without it would provide Warren residents with a better quality of ambulance response and make Warren firefighters more efficient by having them cross-trained to provide two types of service.