Emergency services dashed to Birmingham Street in Stourbridge, West Midlands, and traffic was halted while rescue teams struggled to wrench the vehicle out.

No-one was seriously injured in the horror smash that left the fire engine teetering off the edge of a busy carriageway.

Riverside County firefighters say a fire truck was struck while providing patient care, and one motorist sustained moderate injuries, and taken to the hospital.

No firefighters were hurt.

The crash caused authorities to issue a SigAlert, shutting the southbound lanes of the thoroughfare at Diamond Drive.

 In the 1980’s, EMS started integrating into many fire departments in the country/ Why not–it’s a force of personnel that are there for 24 hours and have many overlapping duties, such as rescue.

Integrating EMS

With the extra responsibility, fire departments started adding personnel to staff the ambulances. As communities became accustomed to the ambulance service, more and more citizens utilized the service to the point that the limited number of ambulances could not support the call volume.

Since payroll is the largest cost in paid municipal departments, in conjunction with incidents of fires decreasing, what better way to solve the shortcoming than to cross-train firefighters and place medical equipment on the fire engines. This would ensure medically trained personnel with medical equipment would arrive in the recommended 4-minute window without having to double or triple the number of staffed ambulances.

All Hazards Response

Since this medical addition, firefighters now respond to water rescues, lifting assistance, hazardous materials incidents, and technical rescue. Recently, firefighters are responding to active shooter events. 

All of these services require more training and addition of some equipment on the fire engine. Today, that same vehicle that only carried water and hose to fight fire now carries a variety of first response equipment, which should change the mindset from fire engine to emergency first response platform.

The driver sits in the driver’s seat of a fire engine, and the dashboard is recreated exactly as a dashboard in a fire engine looks, with all of the same controls.

“It’s really good training, very informative for the fire fighters who are not driving,” Assistant Chief Jason Baird said.

“It puts them in the seat, so they can learn first-hand what it’s like when they do become a driver.”

Scenarios play out in videos, and trainers could rewind the video and point out mistakes where necessary.  

Among the scenarios that drivers completed were how to approach an intersection with other emergency vehicles, dealing with drivers who are not paying attention, and a scenario in which a child runs into the street chasing a basketball.

“The child is in front of a parked car, so it’s a blind spot,” Baird said. “If you’re not paying close enough attention, you never see it coming.”

The station, located on Hasley Canyon Road and Gibraltar Lane in Castaic, will respond to emergency medical situations, structure fires, brush fires and hazardous materials incidents, said Assistant Fire Chief Gregory Hisel.

“With this location and its access to the freeways it'll be a quicker response, it’ll shorten the time to arrive on the incident.” Hisel said.

“When there’s a brush fire up the 5 freeway we will respond to that.”

The station will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven day a week.