INDUSTRY NEWS
RELEASES
- EMS Priority
Dispatch Launched
in St Louis - Iceberg to the
Rescue - A City Mourns Its
Fallen Heroes - Internet Web Site
of Note
EMS Priority Dispatch Launched in St Louis
The City of St. Louis, Missouri, has launched an initiative they call "9-1-1 Plus" [no relation to the PSAP product from LifeSafety Solutions]. An emergency medical response referral system, 911 Plus will transfer 9-1-1 callers not requiring pre-hospital treatment to a referral dispatcher who will connect them with an alternative transportation source or response agency.
"This new system, in which 9-1-1 emergency medical calls will be screened, allows us to code and prioritize calls," said St. Louis Mayor Clarence Harmon. "Urgent and life-threatening calls will be handled as usual. Other calls with by prioritized and transferred to someone who will connect the caller with a more appropriate response agency.
With 9-1-1 Plus, the referral dispatcher will remain on the line and record the call to ensure each caller receives the appropriate response action. "If we are unable to connect the individual with a more appropriate medical response source, the Fire Department Bureau of EMS will respond," added Mayor Harmon.
Fire Chief Neil Svetanics said that the new emergency medical response initiative will eliminate EMS medical crews from having to respond to frivolous non-emergency situations. "We want citizens to continue to use and rely on the 9-1-1 emergency system. But this system gives us the flexibility to maintain public assurance that we are able to respond quickly to life-threatening calls at any time. 9-1-1 Plus will help us save lives as well as save taxpayer dollars on fraudulent ambulance calls."
Iceberg To The Rescue
Summer wildfires don't just keep firefighters hot and busy. They also keep a unique Colorado company busy.
Iceberg Rentals, headquartered in Commerce City, comes to the aid of parched throats and empty stomachs at the scene of forest fires throughout the West. Last summer, Iceberg trailers were on hand at the Buffalo Creek fire in Colorado and a major blaze near Casper, Wyoming.
With bases in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque, in addition to Commerce City, drivers are on call to deliver trailers wherever refrigeration or warm storage is needed, from the Dakotas to Arizona and parts of California. While Iceberg competes with cold storage and refrigerated shipping companies, their advantage is in offering short-term trailer leasing.
 Playing it cool, Colorado's Iceberg Rentals has been bringing out mobile refrigeration units like this to the scene of large wildfires in order to keep firefighters fed and watered. Freeman PR |
The concept originated in the early 1990s when the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs was having to feed more athletes than it was used to. "They needed some temporary cold storage, as there were no plans to increase permanent space at that time," said J. Spencer Dietrich, Iceberg's assistant shop manager. "Our parent company [CT Power Inc.] sells truck-trailer refrigeration units, so we hooked one on to an insulated truck trailer we purchased and delivered it the next day." Gradually more businesses heard about this convenient method of cold storage and the calls started coming in, allowing the company to grow from 30 trailers in 1994 to about 150 today. This eventually led to a favorable relationship with the U.S. Forest Service.
"We strive to be the most customer-friendly in mobile refrigerated trailers," said Dietrich. "Our drivers haul 40-foot trailers up gravel tracks to keep firefighters from being hungry and they rescue broken-down ice-cream vans with melting loads. Our customers know when they call us that we'll do our best, despite the conditions."
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A City Mourns Its Fallen Heroes by Nancy J. Rigg On the night before a public memorial service honoring three Los Angeles firefighters who lost their lives in a helicopter crash, the dark sky shuddered and heaved with thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, as if the elements themselves were tormented with grief. The Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) was still reeling from the death two weeks earlier of Capt. Joseph Dupee, the first LAFD firefighter to die in the line of duty since 1984. Dupee, a 17 year veteran with LAFD, had ordered his crew to evacuate a burning building when the fire became too intense to fight from inside. Although Dupee's crew made it out, Dupee was trapped when the roof collapsed. The death of Capt. Dupee was a stunning blow not only to LAFD, but also to the community at large. In the week preceding Dupee's memorial service, citizens drove with auto lights on during the day as a sign of respect, and flags throughout Southern California were at half-staff. At Dupee's memorial service on March 14th, Fire Chief William Bamattre noted that for many of the young firefighters in the department, this was their first encounter with an incident-related death. "A week ago, early Sunday morning, while the rest of us slept," Bamattre said, "a firefighter, Joseph Charles Dupee, stepped forward out of the anonymity of our ranks and distinguished himself and the entire fire service by making the ultimate sacrifice." Dupee is survived by his wife and two sons, one of whom was born just two weeks earlier on his father's 38th birthday.
Less than a week after removing black bands from their badges following the end of the official mourning period for Dupee, tragedy again struck the LAFD. Firefighter-paramedics Michael Butler, 33, and Eric Reiner, 33, and helicopter crew member Michael McComb, 38, lost their lives when their helicopter crashed as they were transporting critically-injured 11-year old Norma Vides to the hospital. Vides died in the crash along with those who were valiantly trying to save her life. Pilot Steven Robinson, 32, and crewmember Dennis Silgen, 52, miraculously survived, but were hospitalized with serious injuries. Robinson was lauded for heroically guiding the helicopter, which had abruptly lost its tail rotor mid-flight, away from heavily populated neighborhoods and streets below, crash landing it in Griffith Park. On March 28th, a cortege of black-wreathed fire engines bearing the flag-draped coffins, empty boots, and helmets of Butler, Reiner, and McComb, once again made a sad journey from the fire stations where the men served through the streets of the city. As a mournful bagpipe dirge echoed through the concrete canyons of downtown Los Angeles, the vehicle cortege joined with a walking procession of city leaders, friends, concerned citizens, and representatives from nearly two hundred fire-rescue agencies nationwide. Passing beneath an arch of fire ladders, mourners entered the Los Angeles Sports Arena, where thousands more had gathered to bid farewell. Alfred Whitehead, President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said in the eulogy, "In ours, the most dangerous of professions, death is always something we must contend with." Butler, Reiner, and McComb "made the ultimate sacrifice one can make as a firefighter," he added. "They are Los Angeles's heroes. They are America's heroes." Lynne Crocker, Pre-Hospital Care Coordinator for the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, spoke quietly after the memorial service about the impact of losing someone who may be known to you by voice only. "Those of us on the radio, including dispatchers and the mobile intensive care nurses who coordinate with paramedics in the field, are voices without names and faces, until someone dies. There were nurses on the other end of the radio with those paramedics who will forever be reeling from this." In addition to concern for her colleagues and members of the fire-rescue community, Crocker expressed the hope that support for the families of the men who died, and those who survived with injuries, would be ongoing. "We owe it to the families to support them not just today, but a year from now, and as long as they need it," Crocker added. Butler is survived by his wife, who is four months pregnant. Reiner is survived by his wife and four children. And McComb, who would have turned 49 on the day of the memorial service, is survived by his wife and four adult children. For further information see http://www.cityofla.org/lafd |
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Internet Web Site of Note PowerPhone, a national leader in public safety communications training, maintains a notable World Wide Web site at http://www.powerphone.com. The searchable site contains news and information about the company and its training products and seminars, online registration, and also contains a running roster of Dispatchers of the Month (and, annually, one of them selected as Dispatcher of the Year) chosen from reader nominations. |
