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| American Medical Response San Joaquin County's new Disaster Medical Support truck (right) towers over the company's new "concept" ambulance outside their Stockton headquarters on Thursday, June 5, 2008. The state-funded disaster support vehicle carries enough supplies to support a 50-patient trauma event. Ted Benson/The Modesto Bee |
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Ambulance crews in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties have received another piece of equipment for responding to major incidents, whether they occur in the Northern San Joaquin Valley or other parts of the state.
American Medical Response, the largest ambulance provider serving the two counties, was given two of the 25 Disaster Medical Support Units the state is distributing throughout California to beef up emergency preparedness.
The AMR operations center in Stockton received the first one in October. The second was delivered Friday to AMR in Stanislaus County.
The size of a large U-Haul truck, the vehicles are able to supply and support ambulance crews for 72 hours, providing advanced life-support equipment, oxygen, water, food, protective gear and other medical supplies.
They are part of statewide planning to have ambulance strike teams available to respond in case of a mass casualty terrorist attack or natural disaster in California. Many of the state-owned vehicles are being placed with AMR because it's the largest ambulance company in the state.
Local ambulance providers agree to maintain the trucks and can use them in responding to multicasualty incidents close to home. They also agree to send the truck, along with a local ambulance strike team, to major incidents in the state when requested.
The San Joaquin County unit has made appearances at disaster drills.
"A big fire season is projected, so it will be activated before long," said Bob Wattenbarger, San Joaquin County operations manager for AMR.
Company officials said the supply trucks are designed to respond to incidents involving 20 or more casualties. Such incidents aren't hard to imagine in the valley.
It could be a commercial airline crash at the Modesto or Stockton airports, a passenger train derailment, bus accident or major highway pileup, officials said.
Ambulance crews could have used the vehicle May 22 at the fatal van crash and grass fire that caused a four-hour shutdown of Highway 99 near Turlock. Several passengers were in the van and about 100 people were evacuated from businesses on Taylor Road and in the Monte Vista Crossings shopping center.
Several people complained of smoke inhalation, and emergency personnel tended to people with medical problems in stalled cars on the highway.
"These units are a resource we didn't have before," said Mike Corbin, clinical manager for AMR in Stanislaus County. "Unfortunately, they will be used. We have two major freeways that go through this county, and there is potential for structure fires at large office buildings."
Funding for the vehicles came from the emergency preparedness program of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which grew out of the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
Help in local disasters
The state placed the vehicles in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties because AMR has trained personnel to operate the equipment.
The trucks won't be exclusively used in the designated territories that AMR serves in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties. Regional emergency medical services agencies are developing protocols for other local agencies to request the equipment.
Wattenbarger said the vehicles can be requested by local, regional or state agencies. If the state calls for a strike team -- consisting of five ambulances and the supply truck -- local agencies are supposed to have the team rolling in 60 minutes.
The Disaster Medical Support Units are equipped to treat as many as 50 patients at the scene. They carry advanced life- support supplies, backboards for transporting people with spinal injuries and tanks for supplying oxygen to dozens of patients.
The supplies include color- coded tarps and flags for establishing triage stations in the field. People with minor injuries are placed on green tarps. Yellow is for patients who can get by with delayed treatment, red for those needing immediate attention and black for fatalities.
The state equipped the trucks with radio equipment, so paramedics can talk with other emergency responders on the frequencies used in other regions of California.
Because hospitals can be overwhelmed with casualties during a major disaster, paramedics may have to treat patients at the scene for several hours, Wattenbarger said. The trucks likely would be stationed at an incident command center and supply ambulances for three days.
In the past, ambulances had to go on resupply runs, making them unavailable for medical calls.
The supply trucks, costing $100,000 apiece, are among the state medical assets purchased through Homeland Security and other funding sources, said Jeffrey Rubin, chief of disaster medical services for the state's Emergency Medical Services Authority.
The state also has equipment to assemble three mobile field hospitals and has created a registry of medical volunteers to respond in disasters. That's in addition to local government purchases to improve the readiness of hospitals, clinics and emergency services providers.
"I think the size and scope of a future disaster will tell us how well we are prepared," Rubin said. "We continue to build our medical services capability and are definitely better prepared than we have been in the past."
Bee staff writer Ken Carlson can be reached at kcarlson@modbee.com or 578-2321.
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