Ambulance runs account for the vast majority of calls for help
Amherst Police and Fire Department's are swamped on weekends as the returning students have brought with them a boatload of work for our first responders. Both departments will have extra personnel on weekends for the rest of the month (although for APD the weekend starts with "Thirsty Thursdays").
Last weekend, in spite of having 11 full time professional firefighters on duty so all five ambulances could be staffed (up from the normal weekday number of seven firefighters, three ambulances), we still needed to call for mutual aid very early Saturday morning because of the high number of ETOH (alcohol poisoning) cases at our institutes of higher education.
Not only did AFD require reinforcements for an ETOH UMass student via mutual aid ambulance, they also required a second mutual aid ambulance for a serious fiery car accident on South Pleasant street that injured two occupants at 12:36 AM Saturday morning.
That's the problem with these nuisance ETOH babysitting runs to Cooley Dickinson Hospital: they tie up local resources so that when a sudden serious life threatening emergency occurs, valuable time is lost awaiting a mutual aid ambulance from another town.
AFD 9:7:12 Weekend
Ventilate OC (pepper spray) from Bld D North Apartments at UMass.
ReplyDeleteTHAT is a story in and of itself -- may we inquire as to what led to that call?
If you're so concerned about the understaffed Emergency response in Amherst, perhaps you should consider getting certified to help out.
ReplyDeleteAre you the same CAN who suggested I enlist and ship off to Afghanistan?
ReplyDelete