I am serving this week as camp medical director for the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia Student Camp 2010. Yesterday was a crazy day for the medical team, which was a person short and had 40 patient contacts, six of which came at the same time. This required us to triage based on severity, and respond based upon the priority of each. We were walking up to a door to deal with some bee stings with no allergies, and got a call for difficulty breathing, which caused us to re-direct to that. In the end, everyone received care, and the barrage of activity came to a screeching halt.

The same thing can happen in our county. A major weather event, a major incident or something that just taxes our resources beyond their capabilities, and the calls could potentially stack up in the Emergency Communications Center, as well. In this case, whether it be fire calls, EMS calls or both, the dispatcher has to do the same triage based upon the information received. Just as in a mass casualty incident, the call of greatest priority gets the resources first. There are not many times when the available resources countywide are depleted, so though there may be a delay in someone coming to your call for help, there is someone coming.

If we have one of those events where the resources have been completely depleted, it is our practice to request mutual aid assistance. If the severity or nature of the call does not require an immediate response, then the calls are held until an appropriate piece of apparatus, like a brush truck, clears up. It is days like those when we have probably divided the county into four branches: The southern, the northern, the central and the western. In a matter of speaking, each branch goes to a separate radio channel, and operates as its own entity, unless the magnitude of a particular call causes units to have to cross branch boundaries. In other words, a fire at the courthouse would require units to respond from the central and southern branches.

I am thankful that the nature of most of the calls at student camp allows for minimum staff and call stacking at our busiest times. However, there is a plan in place, which allows for Liberty University Police and Lynchburg Fire & EMS to respond, if necessary. In this business of fire and EMS, the key is to always be prepared. You might think that it is overkill to have contingency plans in place for major events, but without those “practiced plans” there would be utter chaos, which sometimes happens even with a plan. It is our job to respond with the most appropriate resources to your calls for help. The person calling doesn’t care who or what responds, but that those who respond can take care of the problem that is occurring. The next time a fire engine or ladder truck pulls up when you have called for an ambulance, keep in mind that the firefighters on those units are emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Also, there are many more engines and ladders than there are ambulances, though the number of ambulances is increasing all the time.