While Yucca Valley’s fire department was established to fight fires, the truth is, 88 percent of the area’s 6,000 annual calls are for medical aids, such as traffic collisions, falls, and injuries. With such a high percentage of medical aid calls, chances are when a call for a fire came in, the 4-man fire crews—captain and engineer on the fire truck, and limited-term fire fighter and the fire fighter/paramedic on the ambulance—were on a medical aid call, which delayed their response to the fire. Managing editor Tami Roleff explains a new program at the county fire department that has added a person to the fire stations, and how it will benefit Morongo Basin residents…
In October, County Fire added six ambulance operators to three Morongo Basin fire stations—Yucca Valley, Yucca Mesa, and Joshua Tree.
“What they have done is transition the ambulance positions into paramedics and EMTs, so they strictly just operate the ambulances. They are trained to not to do fire or rescues or any of the other emergencies we go to.”
Fire County Engineer Jeff Allen said the firefighters/paramedics—who were once assigned to the ambulances—have been moved to the fire engines, which puts three firefighters on an engine instead of the two that were there previously.
“With three people on the engine, on a fire, rescue, and traffic crash with extrication, the more firefighters/paramedics-based calls that we deal with, we can have three people now to share the workload, versus having two, which takes less time to complete a task; there’s less worker’s comp injuries. It allows us to keep our firefighters/medics on the fire engine versus being on the ambulance, being on a medical aid somewhere, and then a fire call comes in and they’re not able to go to the fire because they’re on a medical aid.”
Allen added that having an EMT and a paramedic on the ambulance instead of firefighters reduces the possibility that firefighters will be on a medical aid call when there’s a fire.
“88 percent of our calls are medical aids. Between Stations 41, 36, and 42, we ran over 6,000 calls a year in Yucca Valley. The likelihood of the ambulance being committed on a medical aid, when a fire or rescue or hazardous material call or traffic accident comes in, is high.”
And so far, Allen said, the new arrangement is working out great. “For us to be able to transition the firefighter/medics onto the engines, is a huge step forward for the long-term goals.”
AMBULANCE OPERATORS ADDED TO THREE LOCAL FIRE STATIONS
