robmad87

Treat it like a haz mat incident. Let the local fire dept suit up in turn out gear and scba's to pull the victims to the safe area.

But would rather go commando! The person below me wonders what it would be like to......

The fire station I work at covers about 90 miles of single lane mountain highways, the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa which are almost 14,000 ft elevation, 118,000 acres of open land in our district for wildland fires, and the largest island in the state for wildland fires. 75% of our calls are MVAs, the rest are medical and wildland.

Back to the cardiac arrest on the mountain, the patient, his wife and friend who were on the summit together were all paramedics from Oahu who were on vacation. Our responding ambulance is BLS only. When a paramedic is onboard doing CPR to her husband, we will do anything to assist. We all knew he didn't have a chance, but what could it hurt?

I'm kind of in the same situation here. I went from a busy San Diego station to a rural station on an Army base in the middle of the island of Hawaii. Here, we average about two runs a week. My last cardiac arrest I ran on was at the summit of Mauna Kea, almost 14,000' elevation. Even though we are the closest unit, our response time is still about 45 minutes to the summit by 4x4 ambulance. CPR was in progress for about 40 minutes prior to our arrival, then we transported the patient down to the 9,000' level where the chopper met us. From there, it is a 25 minute flight to the hospital. This patient didn't have a chance! On Feb. 1st next year, we might lose our ambulance due to military politics and funding. If this happens, the closest ambulance will have about a 1.5 hour response time to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa summits, and a 1 hour response time to the area I work. Not a good place to get sick!

I usually have three days off at a time, so I get the house chores done the first day, then play the next two! Spearfishing, kayaking, it's all good! I also have every other weekend off to spend with the family.