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District offers life-support services
POLAND
Although the Western Reserve Joint Fire District does not operate its own ambulance service, it will have more volunteer paramedics available to provide advanced life-support and dispense essential medications.
About two years ago, the all- volunteer department began making the transition to provide advanced life support, said Lee Ingold, a firefighter who organized the effort.
Last week, the department officially began advanced life-support services.
Rural/Metro provides ambulance and paramedic service to Poland Township and village and will continue to do so, he said.
“Usually, they’re right behind us, sometimes right in front of us, but there have been times when ... they’re tied up, and we’ve had a five- to 10-minute wait,” Ingold said.
The advance life-support “really enables us to do a larger variety of care when we’re out in the field,” he said.
Firefighter and paramedic Conner O’Halloran offered the example of caring for car-accident victims.
“If they’re badly trapped, I myself, in full gear, can go into that car and start advanced care. I can secure an airway so I can start breathing for the patient. I can get vascular access and start pushing [intravenous] fluids. I can start giving blood to the patient if the helicopter arrives with it,” O’Halloran said.
But there is no guarantee that a volunteer paramedic will be available for every call, which is why the district will continue its basic life-support training, as well, Ingold said.
Fire Chief David C. Comstock Jr. said the start-up cost, mostly for equipment, is about $50,000 — with $30,000 of that paying for a mobile heart monitor. The heart monitor transmits the patient’s information to area hospitals before the patient arrives.
Comstock said as call-volume increased — from 451 calls in 2000 to 847 calls in 2010 — the need for paramedics became more apparent, because the majority of calls are medical emergencies.
“We wanted to take that up to the next step, and so the first part was to increase the number of paramedics we had. The district’s board of trustees made the decision to pay for people to go to medic school, and three firefighters did that, and we had other medics move into our community,” Comstock said.
The department has six medics, and two more are expected to join soon, he added.
The fire district also plans to bolster the number of paramedics using a federal grant, which will provide about $537,000 for the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters, Comstock said.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Fire Administration awarded the grant May 4 — one day after voters approved a 1-mill additional fire-district levy for capital projects.