What is your Policy regarding an Ambulance being sent to Fire scenes?

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The Agency I work for sends a Medic unit to every fire, we provide rehab for the cities Fire Departments within our County and anyone who may or may not have been injured. 9/10 if we do end up having patient it is a Fire Figher who fell out, and boy are they glad we were there to help them out. We would then call in another ambulance for transport and treat the patient until they arrive, they would transport and we would stay commited to Fire Scene.

Read story below.

http://www.emsworld.com/article/article.jsp?id=18417&siteSection=1

After reading this story I will say this, Denver is a lot busier than us and I have never been to a fire scene where someone was actually trapped in the house, many times there are reports of someone being trapped but those reports have always been false.

That being said, we go to every Fire Scene and do work. No we are Not Fire Fighters, we are County Based Single Role Medics. What is your Policy?
 
In our system, we have dual-role medic units supplemented by volunteer EMS-only units. The dual-role medic unit is needed for the fire staffing on the initial response. In this situation, the medic crew would have tended to the patients and the fire operations would have been defensive only in our system. A medic unit is dispatched on every structure fire to fill the role of medic, but they can be coming from up to 25 minutes away given the rural environment.

This incident in Denver is really unfortunate. I remember from my time in EMS dispatch for a third service, single-role agency that we all shuddered when a working fire came in, cause we knew we were going to lose a unit for quite a while, but they were there to take care of what needed caring for, especially to be ready for any problems fire encountered. We back each other up.

Sounds like in addition to this poor dispatching that they had, this particular incident came in when they were at a low ebb anyway. These things tend to happen sometimes. I hate when a big incident comes in when we are NUA. Our system was NUA when we had our earthquake last month. It was a nightmare for several hours, catching up.
 
We're in a paid EMS, volly fire county. If we hear a fire go out, a crew might decide to mosey on out to look and standby, but a unit isn't sent unless there are confirmed injuries.


Once it becomes a 3 alarm fire, an ambulance gets dedicated to the fire scene until cleared.




The thing I don't like about that story is this: Even if there were an ambulance on scene, the fact that there were 3 patients means it still would have taken just as long to transport all of them. The first transporting unit on scene establishes command. This is an obvious MCI, and as such, you can't just grab one and go, you need other trucks to come and grab them first.
 
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We send a unit or two for fire standby.

Especially in our main city. It looks good that we are there, and in case they do need us, we are there to help immediately.
 
Linuss said:
We're in a paid EMS, volly fire county. If we hear a fire go out, a crew might decide to mosey on out to look and standby, but a unit isn't sent unless there are confirmed injuries.


Once it becomes a 3 alarm fire, an ambulance gets dedicated to the fire scene until cleared.




The thing I don't like about that story is this: Even if there were an ambulance on scene, the fact that there were 3 patients means it still would have taken just as long to transport all of them. The first transporting unit on scene establishes command. This is an obvious MCI, and as such, you can't just grab one and go, you need other trucks to come and grab them first.
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The box wouldn't of had to stay? The supervisor( Who's a medic) could stay while the other 2 were transported, and then only one would have had to wait.
 
When it is a confirmed working fire, or if initial call comes out as possible entrapment.
 
Automatically send one rig to every reported structure fire. Fire will often send them available once they get on scene. We are near Denver, large city, with firefighter medics and private ALS EMS.

This is unfortunate. Denver has a very odd system in my opinion and from what I know. Their PD, EMS and Fire are all very independent. I think sometimes that bites them in the butt.
 
We also have an Ambulance standby at staging for SWAT missions, to support the SWAT Medics participating in the Mission.
 
If the FD determines it is truly a working structure fire an ALS unit is dispatched priority 1.

Too many calls are false alarms to take a unit out of service right off the bat. Our response times are fast enough that by the time fire does extricate a victim we will be on scene.
 
With our main city fire department we will go stand bye on structure fires automatically. As for other areas (county fire) they have to call and request an ambulance.
 
We get 2 transporting units for structure fires ( 1 medic/ 1 BLS minimum ) - prefer 2 medic units.

The first one generally always goes operational, second becomes primary transport medical/command aide.

A separate rehab unit is called for rehab.
 
In our system we have two types of transports, Fire based with one ff/med and one ff/emt that cover all unincorporated areas of our county. And single cert trucks with med/med or med/emt which cover the major city in the county for medical only, as the city handles their own fire related calls.
Within the major city, we send the closest transport regardless of whether they are single or dual certified, they go as a stand by unit in case there are any injuries to ff's or civilians, and if they end up having a pt then we send another unit so there is always a unit on scene. If there are reports of multiple pts we will send more transports as necessary to assure enough for standby and for pt transport/care. If we do send a dual certified unit to a city fire call, they may end up being used by the city as ff's to assist in extinguishment, and if that happens we send the next closest transport to standby.
If a fire occurs outside the major city within the county jurisdiction, we send two 'fire based rescues' which are the dual certified trucks. They serve multiple roles, the first in unit will set up RIT for entry crews, or tend to any pts on scene. The second in unit will either take over RIT or assist in other FF duties... Again if there are reports of multiple pts we will assign additional units as necessary regardless of certification level, will be based on distance to call.
When I say major city… its 40 sq miles, population of about 55,000, biggest city in the county. The county itself is larger than the state of Rhode Island with a population of 350,000. The county and the city are the only two fire depts within the county. Both depts are ALS depts with every engine and rescue/transport being ALS equipped with at least one medic per truck so there is always someone on scene to provide pt care.
 
LondonMedic said:
What's the big deal? There's equipment, a para and some techs on scene. 9 minutes, 17 minutes, it's really unlikely that there's going to be any real difference to outcomes here.

And I know American buildings tend to be different to European, giving you different fire conditions, but do you really have casualties who need a paramedic at every structure fire?
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No, we don't. I can't speak for every service in the US. But our Ambulances are mainly there for the FF in rehab. Rarely is there a civilian casualty at a Fire, but if there is. Well, there we are.
 
Not sure of our exact policy, but in the year that I've been with this rural department we were only dispatched to a confirmed fire (mutual aid with pumper and tanker) and ambulance was requested and dispatched because it was a chemical plant.
 
I am a civilian medic for the fire department. We dispatch a medic unit on every box alarm to be there for the FFs. We respond non-emergent unless the fire comes out as an entrapment. If there are any injuries that require transport, additional units are dispatched to the scene.
 
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