High Winds and NOT RESPONDING?

We. Go. Out

When storms shut down entire ports, we go out. When hurricanes ground the United States Navy, we go out. And when the holy Lord himself reaches down from heaven and destroys his good work with winds that rip houses off the ground, We. Go. Out.
 
medictinysc said:
When storms shut down entire ports, we go out. When hurricanes ground the United States Navy, we go out. And when the holy Lord himself reaches down from heaven and destroys his good work with winds that rip houses off the ground, We. Go. Out.
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Wait - hurricanes ground the Navy? We must not have gotten that memo when I was in because we did several SAR missons in the middle of typhoons. ;)
 
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SloEd said:
Tigger,
The sprinters are narrower, so it takes less force to tip them over (theoretically at least). It also seems like a lot of Type IIs have smaller sway bars so it feels tippier.
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A Sprinter van is 79.7 inches wide and an E-350 Extended van is 79.4 inches.

Track width of a Sprinter is 68 inches and the E-Series is 69 inches front/ 66 in the rear.
 
medictinysc said:
When storms shut down entire ports, we go out. When hurricanes ground the United States Navy, we go out. And when the holy Lord himself reaches down from heaven and destroys his good work with winds that rip houses off the ground, We. Go. Out.
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You watch The Guardian lately?
427_thumb.jpg
Kevin_Costner_in_The_Guardian_Wallpaper_2_1024.jpg
 
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Wonder why Sprinters look so much higher and narrower. Maybe it's a flattering paint job.
07_manorexia_lg.jpg
 
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mycrofft said:
Wonder why Sprinters look so much higher and narrower. Maybe it's a flattering paint job.
07_manorexia_lg.jpg
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Eh - the big difference is they have flat sides, vs curving sides.
 
Funny I just went over this is my orgo, our main ambulance is not allowed to travel faster than 35mph with winds over 40mph, and is out of service when winds reach 50mph.

After 50mph we respond in SUV's with all our equipment and the hospital has a special transport ambulance that is "hurricane proof" that we use to transport.
 
Ordinal rule of thumb to compare tip-ability.

How to figure out how a rule-of thumb relative measure of how likely you are to tip over.

Measure wheelbases (front wheel to back wheels, sideways between wheels), multiply these. This is your FOOTPRINT.

Divide these by the height off the ground the center of gravity (CG) is. The lower the number the higher your chance of tipping such as in a turn.

Subtract how many pounds of equipment are stored above the vertical CG, including people, from the CG/footprint factor. This will dial it in more closely.

As an added measure, you can multipy by the years of good driving the operator has.
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To independently account for lateral wind pressure, subtract the SQUARE (not cubic) feet of side area ("sail") from the lateral wheelbase, then subtract the pounds of cargo above the vertical CG.


These are only to rank the "tipability" of units, they are not engineering measurements or anything like that. The amount of "slant" off the vertical of the sail area also affects to a degree. Since spin on slick surfaces can contribute to flipping or tipping, finding the lateral center of gravity between the wheels and loading over the drive wheels could also be interesting, but beyond my desire to guess at right now.
 
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Pennsylvania Bureau of EMS released this distillation of a Florida Institute of Technology study.

Emsi.org/Files/Admin/EMSIB%202011-012.pdf

Essentially, in winds > 35 mph you should reduce speed and winds > 50 mph ambulance should be sheltered. The document also has recomendations for fire trucks and SUV's.

Be safe,
Carl
 
I think I've said before but we don't stop responding. We can choose to downgrade to Code 2. Winds in my area easly exceed 50 mph.

Other than that we treat it as a big game. Trying to stand up in the wind and sand, trying to move patients into the ambulance quickly, keeping that mattress on the gurney, carefully opening the doors as they can fling open and toss you on the ground, and last but not least remembering to only open one door at a time or everything gets blown out of the ambulance.

The worst wind I have ever been in was driving from Ohio to New York/New Jersey and we are passing semi trucks that got flipped over by the wind. We were extremely close to finding shelter. Instead we tried to outrun the storm and head for the mountains.
 
ThirtyAndTwo said:
Funny I just went over this is my orgo, our main ambulance is not allowed to travel faster than 35mph with winds over 40mph, and is out of service when winds reach 50mph.

After 50mph we respond in SUV's with all our equipment and the hospital has a special transport ambulance that is "hurricane proof" that we use to transport.
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"Hurrincane proof"?

Please explain what makes it that. I'm curious.
 
We do not have any SOGs regarding when not to respond. Well, we do, we should always respond to an emergency scene, but there is nothing saying that we have to get there fast. In a snowstorm, I've responded at 10 miles an hour before. It just all depends on the weather and what you are comfortable doing.
 
We never stop responding. There's been times when I'll go ahead of the rig in my SUV, just because I can get there faster/not get stuck.
 
Yeah yesterday in NorCal was pretty blowy. Lotta downed limbs and trees and fences.
 
We call a high wind delay and continue on our merry way nice and slowly.

We get some severe weather from time to time and never stop responding...
 
Yesterday, according to the news, parts of our response area had 80mph gusts. All we received was a page saying to be careful but we did not stop responding.
 
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