timboyle

I had a call where it wasn't a terrorist. It was a husband who went crazy and shot his wife. I was having a smoke out front of the station at 11pm and heard this lady calling for help across the street. It was too dark to see what happened. I went (ran) over and she told me her husband shot her in the pelvis. He was inside the house coming out. So I threw her (all 250lbs) on my back and ran her into the station bay and called the PD for backup. She was critical for 2 days but survived. Sometimes we risk our safety and don't initially know it. But that's part of the risk as 911 responders. Oh, and all the PD units were refueling at the time for shift change. Perfect timing.

When Ford rigs were gasoline powered, we had a 10 year old Braun that stalled at least twice when leaving the station. Just rev it up a few times and she'd get right back on the road. The 80's air horn was nice thou.

I have experience with the 4400 with DT466 engine and air-ride. It's a great TRUCK, but that's it's drawback as an ambulance...it rides like a truck. The one I drove was used as a rescue (standard cab with 16.5' rear box), which it was great at. The EMTs hated driving it because it was big and hard to maneuver around our town's narrow streets. The DT466 is a workhorse engine, very powerful. Our town had a Navistar-only fleet for sanitation and streets, they all used the DT466 even for 34-yard sanitation trucks and the engines did very well. The mechanics loved them. I don't know about fuel efficiency thou, it wasn't our concern. We were more concerned about power and parts availability/repair turnaround from the city's shop crew. Bigger isn't always better. It requires a lot more attention to drive. I would stick with the E350/F350 platform if you like smoother rides and driver-friendliness. Go Navistars if you have a lot of patience and truck drivers.

When I worked in a 911 center, we were trained not to transmit unrelated medical information over the radio. If an ambulance is giving a receiving hospital a patient report over radio, they'd give any information relative to the patients condition (vitals, age, LOC, injuries/chief complaint, and ETA). No names ever. That information is part of the transfer of care and is in line with a health professional talking to another health professional about the patient's condition, i.e. protected under federal law. If the disease is not part of the chief complaint, or relative to the nature of the call and responder safety, then it wouldn't be given. However, if serious conditions permitted, the ambulance crew would call the hospital via cell phone to alert them of the patient's medical history. Getting a patient's approval to communicate their medical history will prevent money hungry lawyers from making a case out of a good proactive decision. Make sure it's recorded too. I've had a patient tell me they had TB AFTER we got to the ER. They were afraid that we wouldn't respond to the call and transport them. Not knowing this, I didn't wear a face shield. Luckily I didn't get anything. I've also found out that bloody trauma patients had HIV days after transporting them, luckily I used gloves. Bottom line, treat every patient cautiously.

If the disease is highly contagious and predominantly airborne, the best way is to ask the caller if you can tell the responding ambulance crew the condition. If they say yes, then do it the most confidentially-possible way. If you can have the crew call into you on a cell phone, then so be it. But, blabbing the wrong information over a radio can land you in major trouble. Certain diseases cause stigma (HIV or now MRSA for example). If you say that someone at the address you just dispatched has a disease, and a neighbor just happens to be one of those tuning into scannerland, then you could be in serious trouble. My opinion, the best way is always C-Y-A (cover your ass). If universal precautions (that thing BSI we're all supposed to do) will prevent the spread of said disease, I don't think it's necessary to communicate it. That responsibility is on us (I wouldn't treat bums here in NYC without it, gloves and mask). Tell the patient to let the crew know their condition when they arrive. Also, health care facilities have greater protection when communicating patient information than government or private organizations. There's a lot of federal law about patient confidentiality and who's covered under what circumstances.

Yes, good old Monmouth County. I worked in the county radio back in 1998 when MONOC was still dispatched out of there. This was back when there was only about 9 ALS units for the entire county, on an over-staffed day. I always ended up working with 5952 or 5956. I guess they changed their numbers since they went to their own dispatching. Where I work we have call signs of rank followed by badge number...."Deputy1", "Brigade1". Our command is 151 (it's a lobby fire command station) and our radio room is just "Base". FDNY will come up on our radios when they respond in with their own system of call signs. Only FDNY fire uses our repeater radio, EMS usually doesn't. Although we have about 2 to 4 ems calls on an average day. The most we had was 10 in one day I believe.

Where I first started in Jersey the county radio standardized the unit numbers for the entire county. All units had a four digit call number. Each municipality had a two digit number, based in alphabetical order. There were no agencies from 1 to 10, they started at 11. The next two numbers indicated what type of unit the vehicle was. There was no separation of BLS to ALS. EMS had the designations from 50 to 65. Officer units were 50 to 54, a first responder (non-transport) was 55, ambulances were 56 to 62, rescue (non-transport) units were 63 to 65. Fire units followed from 66 up to 99. Units were always pronounced.... 5956 was "fifty nine, fifty six" So an ambulance would be 4257 for instance, first responder unit for another agency would be 1555. Some larger agencies would add hundreds to their unit type numbers ass needed if they exceeded the system..... 59156 would be a transport ambulance too.