Others in more recent times have not been as fortunate though. Barney will pull them over and despite the obvious urgent need such as bleeding to death would make the persons wait for an ambulance with the hospital literally only blocks away. Our nation is loosing it's common sense.
I live out in a rural area. The ambulance HQ for years was about 12 miles out on rural roads "IF" the one zoned for our area wasn't tied up on another call. Now it's staged about 8 miles out same roads. If it's busy the next close one could be up to 20 out. The hospital with me driving my vehicle is 15 minutes away on mainly good highway and interstate. 20 minutes would put me at a Level One if needed. In the near 30 years we were married I think I called an ambulance but once. The other times I rushed her in myself because it was faster and yes I was trained and qualified to make the assessments.
By this new prevailing logic a Rescue Squad rescuing persons in a flash flood would only be allowed to carry the number of rescued in their boat they had life jackets for.
The firefighters put saving life over liability. The insurers should cover life and death transports in any vehicle same as an private policy holder and liability medically fall under Samaritan Laws as far as any medical liability goes in doing so.
My area is VFD covered. They send out a SUV for medical calls though & not the truck. They usually beat the ambulance by 5-10 minutes. I know that because I called them several times for my dad and once for my mom due to falls at home.
We have lost all common sense now.
Thirty five years ago I lived about 20 minutes from Ft Bragg. A friend, also military dependent, came flying into my yard with her son, choking. We couldn’t dislodge whatever it was, I put both in my car, headed to Ft Bragg hospital, and contacted the MP’s on CB13.
They contacted the Highway Patrol who came screaming up, passed me and waved me to follow. Sirens all the way to the hospital with MP’s holding traffic at the lights and as soon as I entered emergency doctors running out. They had contacted the hospital for me also.
Less than 10 minutes door to door.
No one ever suggested I should have waited for an ambulance or waited for help. We didn’t used to be a nation of wimps and lawyers.
OK. nice story. What the parents should have done is taken the kid to the ED themselves just like you did.
I ran QRS (Quick Response Service) for years so I know all about getting on scene before a BLS or ALS truck. This has nothing to do with what happened here. The only time you put a civilian in a fire truck to transport to a ED is when you have command approval to do so, which is like almost never. And if you think that drivers get out of the way of fire trucks with lights flashing then you are crazy. And even so when EMS proposed to take over and they declined this is very poor judgement. Even if they were in the parking lot of the hospital they should have yeilded on this.
An ambulance when it’s on the way to the ED, they call the receiving hostital to let them know what they are bring in and to give the vitals and so forth. So the ED probably had no idea what was coming and it doesn’t seem like the FFs had taken any vitals or anything. This is not TV had it been a real emergency they might have been advised by the command Doctor to go elseware or to administer a certain meds. But they were freelancing so couldn’t do any of that.
Again, from what I read in the story the kid was not having a life threatning event. The Fire Service is as close to the military as you can get we have to have disclipline and sorry these guys messed up. If you want to get pissed off at something get pissed at the people who call 911 for a nosebleed. That is probably why the EMS unit was so far out, taking some loser to the ED for a hangnail.
Let it go.