News and Information for the community served by Huron Valley Ambulance |
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News and Information |
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| HURON VALLEY AMBULANCE | September 5, 2003 |
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| A Nonprofit Community Service | ||||
| EMS during the Blackout of 2003 | ||||
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The Blackout of 2003
took it’s toll on our community last month, as people struggled with
darkness, lack of refrigeration, unlit traffic signals and closed gas
stations. We are pleased to report that emergency medical services continued
to function without interruption, as HVA and our partner fire departments
continued to provide responsive service to 911 requests. When a major stress is placed on any system, things don’t always go as planned and the unexpected sometimes occurs. It is important that we learn from these experiences. During the first several hours of the blackout, 9-1-1 requests for EMS escalated rapidly. To cover this sharp increase in demand, extra paramedic ambulances were staffed by leadership, as well as through a call-back of off duty personnel. Many day shift paramedics also held over to provide coverage into the evening. At one point, HVA augmented our normal complement of paramedic units with 14 additional ambulances. Requests for service began to stabilize about 8:00 p.m. but it appeared that we might need to evacuate a nursing home due to generator problems. Some of these patients were transported to hospitals, but the nursing home’s generator was repaired about 10:00 p.m., making a full evacuation unnecessary. One of the biggest community needs was assistance to people who use electric-powered home oxygen concentrators. We received over one hundred requests for this type of assistance. For patients who were in crisis, HVA paramedics responded along with fire rescue units. For others not in crisis, we recommended that they find a ride to the hospital. Our hospitals were quickly overburdened and this is now an area we must look at in the planning process—finding a faster way to activate shelters that have electrical power. This is an issue we will talk about with other providers during emergency operations planning. Finding diesel fuel for our ambulances was another unanticipated problem. The few open gas stations had long lines. Several municipalities came to our rescue and provided emergency fuel. Other cities have since offered to provide emergency fuel in the future. We are grateful for everyone’s support. At 5:00 a.m. Friday morning, we received a mutual aid request to provide ambulances in northwest Detroit, to evacuate a nursing home that experienced generator failure. We sent four ambulances to help them with that situation. Overall, operations during the blackout went well and were uneventful, for the most part. We will be working on the home-oxygen issue, arranging for alternate fuel supplies, and making other small tune-ups in our disaster plan. We also thank the 400+ members of the HVA staff, as well as police, fire, emergency management and hospital officials, who pulled together quickly in response to this situation. We are pleased that our residents were well served during this crisis.
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