Editor’s Opinion Ed Ballam
Because I am who I am, I listen to the fire radio almost nonstop. I don’t know how my wife deals with it, but she does, and I try to be respectful as to not interfere with quiet or TV time or sleeping, but it’s on almost all the rest of the time.
I like listening to what other area departments are doing. You never know what you’ll hear. For instance, the other day I listened to a medical call dispatched for difficulty breathing—arguably one of the most common calls in the EMS arena. No big deal. But, as the dispatcher relays more information, this call becomes more serious. The dispatcher says, 65-year-old female, difficulty breathing. Adds, has fallen down a steep embankment Whoa … that’s a different call now. Maybe it’s a technical rescue or, at the very least, a far more challenging patient extrication.
More information follows. She landed in a bees’ nest and has been stung multiple times. That’s an interesting development—firefighter safety is now more involved than previously. Patient says she can’t get out of the embankment and thinks she is having an allergic reaction. Now this is a very real emergency.
You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you can, but it usually comes from the mind of a very creative instructor making up a teaching scenario that challenges students. This one, however, was real life. Think about how that escalated in seconds from a routine call to a potentially life-threatening event. And, just to satisfy everyone’s curiosity, the patient was extricated from down over the embankment, she was evaluated, and the EMTs on the scene got an informed refusal of care, or sign off, and there was no transport provided. No further treatment was needed. The firefighters with the rescue equipment cleared the scene as did the ambulance—returned to quarters in service. Phew. Mission accomplished and everyone went home.
I was listening to another call recently. Midday call for a smoke investigation, possibly from the roof of a structure, possibly from an outside fire in back of it. One of those who-knows-until-you-get-there calls. Turns out, it’s a three-alarm structure fire on Main Street in an historic building next to an even more historic church. Again, that escalated quickly, from a smoke investigation to a conflagration that destroyed an 1874, three-story brick schoolhouse building, com