January 10, 2022 Westminster Fire Dept. report by Kevin Dayhoff
20220110 K WFD rprt - Notes for the Westminster Fire Department operational report by Kevin Dayhoff – chaplain and PIO, for the January 10, 2022 Westminster Common Council meeting.:
For the month of December, the total call for service were 633. EMS – 523 calls. Fire – 110 calls. 359 of the calls were in the city limits. 195 just outside the city limits. 55% of our calls were overlapping.
Total calls for 2020 were 6025. Total calls for 2021 were 6676 – or 651 more calls than last year.
Staffing COVID-19 Omicron variant challenges:
Locally the recent surge in COVID-19 illness among EMS providers and first responders caused by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, has caused significant challenges with staffing in the fire service in Carroll County.
In Carroll County 25% of county fire and EMS employees are currently on sick leave.
To make matters worse, our local hospital has recently been frequently on re-route due to more lengthy offloading times – or the hospital has no more capacity for additional patients. This means that medic units must transport patients to hospitals in Hanover, Gettysburg, Howard, Baltimore, or Frederick County. Or the wait time to get a patient in the door at the local hospital can be as long as 4-6-hours. This ties-up the number of medic units available for calls.
The surge in additional calls and the long distances needed to travel to neighboring counties is also causing a significant amount of wear and tear on the equipment.
In Carroll County – and Westminster, we have had to take significant measures to maintain core services during an influx of COVID cases in the community. We have essentially halted all non-emergency activities.
One measure recently adopted is up-staffing – or overstaffing to provide three medic units available at Westminster. Usually, we staff for two medic units. Unfortunately, another measure is ‘holdover’ providers causing responders to work two-24-hour shifts or in some cases three- 24 hour shifts in a row. As you can imagine, this is quite a mental and physical strain on the fire and EMS providers.
Recently county EMS operations showed a 30% increase in EMS responses in the past month during peak demand hours, between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m.
Although, through careful planning, there is currently little impact on the response times of EMS to get to the patient’s side. However, we could use a little help. We need to urge citizens to only call 911 for true, life and death emergencies.
Meanwhile, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 -- and following health and safety protocols like masking -- are the best ways the public can support EMS providers.
+++ Dayhoff Westminster +++
Kevin Dayhoff for Westminster Authority Caroline Babylon, Treasurer.
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