Utah’s emergency communications may be on the brink of collapse, lending urgency to a planned massive system upgrade. But the project is on hold while two industry giants brawl over the taxpayer-funded contract for new two-way radios and equipment. Florida-based Harris Corp. won the contract with a bid of some $50 million — a price that the state says is $30 million below that of the losing bidder, Motorola.
- PUB DATE: 4/2/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Salt Lake Tribune

Inova Health System, Inova Trauma and Blood Donor Services, and the Northern Virginia EMS Council, in collaboration with the Fairfax County and Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Departments, have launched Field Available Component Transfusion Response (FACTR) to provide blood to entrapped trauma patients on the scene.
- PUB DATE: 4/2/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Loudoun Now

First, the good news: Fatal drug overdoses in Louisiana appeared to level off in 2018 after years of steady increases fueled by the nationwide opioid epidemic. Now, the bad news. Even though the number of overdoses stabilized, it plateaued at a historically high number. And it would take many years of steep reductions to bring the rate back to where it was before the opioid crisis began.
- PUB DATE: 4/2/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Baton Rouge Advocate

A West Haven firefighter/paramedic who was seriously injured only two days on the job 20 years ago has passed away. James Woodman was injured in October of 1999 when an ambulance he was riding in outside Yale-New Haven Hospital collided with a car. It was his last day on the job. Here is what the West Haven Fire Department Historical Library had to say about the firefighter's passing on its website: "It is with great sadness that we must share the news of James Woodman's passing.
- PUB DATE: 4/1/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: West Haven Patch

VIDEO: Two EMTs are out of their jobs after a controversial life-saving device indicated the pair didn't adequately deliver CPR during an emergency run in January that ended with a death. Michael Morgan and partner Julian Holts were terminated by Detroit's fire administration last month after using a Zoll monitor-defibrillator, a device designed to detect and evaluate cardiac rhythm problems and heart attacks — and it reports out CPR feedback, which the union contends was used against the men in their dismissals.
- PUB DATE: 4/1/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Detroit News