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The answer is that fire departments respond to any call where there could be an injury or other related need, because they are also EMTs, and in the U.S. you ju
by mangeletti 11y ago
The answer is that fire departments respond to any call where there could be an injury or other related need, because they are also EMTs, and in the U.S. you just call 911 and tell the operator what's wrong. If you say you want an ambulance, chances are, you'll get an ambulance... and a fire truck. This is partly due to the fact that most ambulances are a private service and don't really represent the service of the city (which firefighters / fire EMTs do represent).
The problem is that we don't really have a sort of emergency first responder triage department. The operators are it. There's isn't an EMT who can speed to the scene in a fuel efficient car on his own to bring you some bandaids or water and check your blood pressure (e.g., in the case of a homeless person prone with a needle in his arm), and then call for more help if needed, so, instead, a $300,000 hook and ladder truck full of 4 highly trained firefighters (also trained as EMT) is deployed to do the same thing.
- mattmanser 11y agoThat doesn't really answer the question. Why is a fire truck helping a drunk instead of an ambulance?
- jcrawfordor 11y agoFire crews are also trained as EMTs. So when you're trying to get an EMT somewhere as quickly as possible, that will often actually be a fire crew.
- aliston 11y agoIn San Francisco, the Fire Department is one of the city's ambulance providers. They have ambulances: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/SFFD_ambulance_M75.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/SFFD_amb... Apparently sometimes they send the actual fire trucks, though. It would be interesting to know if these stats included the ambulance service.
- pstuart 11y agoWhere I live (in the SF East Bay), I often see multiple units servicing medical emergencies. I can't help but think that the extra units show up so that they can inflate their stats for community service when contract time comes.
- jcrawfordor 11y agoAnother factor here is that in most places, it seems including San Francisco, fire stations are much more evenly distributed across the city than hospitals with ambulances based out of them. So just in terms of travel time, the fire department is usually able to arrive before an ambulance, sometimes significantly.