Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 21, 1993 TAG: 9301210304
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
EMERGENCY RESPONSE TIMES VARY
If you are injured in a traffic accident in Southwest Roanoke, you can expect emergency-rescue workers to arrive in less than six minutes.The same is true in the Southeast and Northeast sections of the city.
But you can expect to wait longer - as much as eight minutes or more - if you are injured in the Peters Creek Road area or upper Northwest.
The response times in those sections of the city is longer than the goal of four to six minutes that is considered critical in life-threatening illnesses or injuries.
For the city as a whole, the average response time on emergency medical calls is 5.2 minutes, down from 6.2 minutes a year ago.
The response times in the Peters Creek and upper Northwest section average 8.2 minutes, according to data collected recently by a citizens' advisory committee on the city's emergency medical services system.
"Performance standards are not consistently being met in the Peters Creek Road area," the committee said in a report that includes several recommendations to strengthen the emergency-medical system. City Council will consider the report next week.
Wanda Reed, manager of emergency services for the city and a committee member, said Tuesday that emergency-services officials are concerned about the slow response times in the Peters Creek area.
"Yes, we know they are slower there, but we hope to do something about it," Reed said.
The city plans to start a program there that will allow medically trained firefighters to respond to emergency medical calls. It would be similar to one already operating at three other fire stations.
The city has a combined system of volunteer lifesaving crews, paid emergency rescue workers and firefighters to answer emergency calls. The firefighters supplement the volunteers and paid workers.
There are several reasons for the slower responses in the Peters Creek Road area:
There is no emergency-rescue station on Peters Creek Road or in upper Northwest. The Hunton Life Saving Crew, which served the Northwest area for many years, folded five years ago because of the lack of members.
The closest rescue station is at Melrose Avenue and 24th Street, a former gas station that was not designed for ambulances or other emergency vehicles. To help cover the area that had been served by Hunton, the city rented the building on Melrose and converted it into a rescue station.
The station does not have enough space to accommodate the vehicles that are needed to meet the increasing demand for service in the Northwest area. Vehicles leaving the building are damaged frequently because the bay doors are too small.
Emergency medical calls are often received from the Northwest area while the crew at the Melrose station is out on a call, requiring crews to be dispatched from other parts of the city.
Because of the heavy demand for service and space problems at the Melrose station, 22 percent of the emergency calls in the Peters Creek and Upper Northwest area must be answered by rescue stations in Southwest Roanoke or Williamson Road.
To speed up response times in the Peters Creek area, the advisory committee on emergency medical services has recommended that a "first-responder" program be started at Fire Station No. 13 on Peters Creek Road.
The committee has recommended that it be started by Feb. 1, but Reed said the city may wait until July 1 to begin the program because of budget constraints.
It would be similar to a program operating at three fire stations on the outskirts of the city, Nos. 4, 11 and 14, where response times have been reduced by an average of three minutes.
At those stations, the firefighters are trained as emergency-medical technicians so they can answer first-aid calls.
The firefighters provide assistance until full-time paramedics or other emergency-medical personnel arrive or they determine that no other help is needed.
First-responder programs are operating in the U.S. 460 East area, Southeast and Garden City, and the Aerial Way Drive and Brandon Avenue corridor.
In the past year, the first-responder program provided assistance on 1,150 emergency calls, about 8 percent of 14,400 calls that were received citywide.
The advisory committee also has recommended that the city develop alternatives for providing an adequate rescue station in the Northwest area to replace the Melrose Avenue station.
Until the city switched to a combined system five years ago, the volunteers operated as the Roanoke and Williamson Road lifesaving crews. The squads were consolidated into the Roanoke Emergency Medical System Inc., which has 120 volunteers to help provide the service. The city has 25 full-time and 26 part-time emergency medical employees.