Comments on: Lawsuit dismissed – no special relationship

By: Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:28:54 +0000

firehat, if you provided an email with your comments, I would not have to make a public post. All I have is your Twitter info.

I appreciate that you were making an observation in response to richhoyle's post. You got someone mad enough to establish an identity and post an EMS hater response to you.

You are not responsible for making EMShat mad. I do not want the discussion to go in that direction. I appreciate that you read Firegeezer and post reactions.

Emergency service workers are passionate people with exposed hot buttons. We have a tendency to view issues in stark "right" vs. "wrong" viewpoints.

Mike

By: firehat

firehat — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:07:28 +0000

My post was in response to richhoyle's and was on a related topic.

By: Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:28:54 +0000

By: firehat

firehat — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:07:28 +0000

My post was in response to richhoyle's and was on a related topic.

By: Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:59:58 +0000

Firehat and emshat:

This was not posted to create a fire-vs-ems debate.

richhoyle

I wonder if haz-mat awareness was enough for single-role ems providers to be sensitized to recognize the possibility. EMS has a shift commander on duty, in 2006 an all-volunteer fire department.

Since this event, the town has revised protocols and practices within incident command, CO awareness and multiple patient incidents.

This is a resort town on a nine mile long peninsula with a year round population of 7173. The 4.6 square mile town swells to a summer population of 258,726.

OC handles 5700 ems responses a year, 80% of the incidents occur from mid May to early September,

I agree with Fire Cap5 that this is a sad situation all around.

I can imagine that the first two crews were very busy with four CO patients in distress and understand why they needed help from the third arriving ambulance.

Going from a small winter town to the second largest Maryland city in the summer creates unique challenges in training, operations and individual provider experience.

Mike

By: EMShat

EMShat — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:19:35 +0000

You must be an EMS hater, to try and blame the EMS crew !! Lets talk about the Charleston nine and how they failed their scenerio !!

By: firehat

firehat — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:50:40 +0000

We have a third-service EMS agency in my city and I am pretty sure that over half of our paramedics would've failed this same scenario.

By: richhoyle

richhoyle — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:26:21 +0000

Legal opinions aside, one has to wonder why someone in the Fire/EMS chain of command didn't recognize the probability that if they had a CO leak in at least two rooms of the motel that the problem might be more widespread and require that all occupied rooms be searched for additional victims…or the motel evacuated until such time as the source of the CO leak could be determined and mitigated.

In fact when I struck for my EMS Lieutenant's exam the practical mini mass casualty scenario was almost identical to this situation and the candidates failure to recognize the potential for additional casualties in other living spaces within the same structure was a reason for failure of that event.

By: TheFireCritic

TheFireCritic — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:05:04 +0000

What a nightmare. A very unfortunate string of events. The department has a need to act, learn, and reform their response so that this does not happen again!!!

By: Fire Cap5

Fire Cap5 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:57:51 +0000

I can't seem to work up any joy that the department got off the hook. It is a definate tragedy that the call was recieved, dispatched and responded to for room 121, yet they did not get any help.

A sad situation all around.