The Emergency Medical Services Field Response
|
The exact number of EMTS, ambulances and other EMS rescue vehicles assigned to the medical response is unknown. Unfortunately, an unrelated fire that occurred before the civil disturbance destroyed LAEMSA's ability to collect this data. Table 13 shows available EMS resources. A substantial drop in countywide EMS dispatches, as distinguished from the civil disturbance, kept these resources from being overwhelmed (see dispatch data below). This is not to say that EMS services dispatched by other than LAPD did not continue in other portions of the county; they did and without significant delays. Many EMTs played a dual role of firefighter and EMT. Data developed by Los Angeles County Fire Department shows that the number of structural fires and injury transports increased during the afternoon and evening hours on Wednesday and Thursday (compare Graph 13 below with overall injury data). Due to the tremendous volume of structural fires being fought, fewer EMS responders were available. Calls were triaged and those rescues deemed non-critical received an EMT first responder rather than the normal ALS response. In fact, many incidents in the disaster area that would have been responded to under normal circumstances were not because the demand for firefighters was so heavy (LA County Fire, 1992). A second factor that limited the availability of EMS resources was the lack of law enforcement personnel to provide protection to EMS response vehicles. This problem is discussed more fully below. Both Los Angeles City and County Fire Departments decided not to use helicopters to transport injured civilians from the civil disturbance area. Such missions were considered to be too dangerous because the helicopter could be shot down and/or insufficient ground protection could be provided for landing zones. Helicopters were available to transport injured public service workers (Pratt, 1992). Fourteen city rescue units were assigned to South Central Los Angeles by the Los Angeles City Fire Department the first day. This is the normal complement of units for this area. They fielded five additional ambulances over their normal complement (Pratt, 1992). An early OES Situation Report said that 20 ambulances had been assigned to the incident during the first few hours (OES, April 30, 1992). Altogether, there may have been as many as 72 public and private ambulances responding on any one day during the whole of the incident (Cowen, 1992). By early Wednesday, LA City Fire Department fielded 10 rescue ambulances from its reserve fleet. To do this, they only needed to stock and staff them. The ambulances were placed on two strike teams in anticipation of multiple casualty incidents but, fortunately, were never used. The ambulances were made available for other duty (Eisner, 1992). Adams and Goodhew, at their own initiative, voluntarily reduced the number of convalescent home and other hospital transfers close to the disaster area. The volume of requests for service dropped for both companies (see dispatch data below). At one point, Los Angeles City Fire Department requested that private ambulances be assigned to them by LAEMSA. This request was turned down because LAEMSA had been informed that private ambulance resources were not available (Chaffin, 1992). However, private ambulance companies self-dispatched and assigned ambulances for transport to the fire service (Pratt, 1992). LAEMSA made four staffed DHS ambulances available to Los Angeles City Fire Department. An additional five were made available to the Los Angeles County Fire Department. These crews had very limited experience with stabilizing injured persons in the field and normally do not respond to 9-1-1 related dispatches. They provided first aid to fire and law enforcement personnel who got hurt or helped transport victims from a medical staging area (Chaffin, 1992). |
Continue to Fire Department Resources
Return to the Table of Contents
Medical Care for the Injured