"A Dead Paramedic Can't Save Lives"

By Mitch Traphagen

mitch@observernews.net

SUN CITY CENTER - It's easy to imagine the scenario. You are sitting in traffic waiting for a light on State Road 674. All you wanted to do is go to Wal-Mart and there are so many stupid people out driving that it's taking forever to get there. Just a simple errand and you're wasting time waiting for the lights to change, for the people ahead of you to get moving.

Then you see an ambulance trying to weave through the cars. You glance at it indifferently - you see it almost every day. In fact, the ambulance has now become part of your problem. Because of it trying to get through all of the traffic, the light has changed and you didn't get to go through. What a pain.

It is a scenario often repeated in South Hillsborough County. Roads built decades ago are supporting an ever growing population and, particularly in the winter, traffic tends to build. The traffic exists in sharp contrast to our somewhat rural environment.

But now imagine the other side of the above scenario. Your husband or wife just had a heart attack and minutes count. Where is the ambulance? Your child had an accident while playing outside. He looks to be in shock and it appears that an arm is broken, it seems like a lifetime ago since you called 911. Why aren't they here yet?

Why aren't they there yet? Is there a growing indifference to pulling to the side of the road for emergency vehicles?

Perhaps it is time for people to think about both scenarios. The frustration that drivers feel as an ambulance ties up traffic versus the terror a frantic mother or spouse is feeling as she is waiting for an ambulance. It boils down to a simple comparison of convenience and a few minutes extra in traffic versus life and death. It should be easy.

But, according to South Hillsborough authorities, that comparison is apparently not so easy for a growing number of people.

"People don't seem to want to pull out of the way anymore," said Sun City Center Community Resource Deputy Joe Burt. "Put yourself in the emergency vehicle. They're looking down the road to find their path. When we respond to an emergency we're looking way down the road, trying to determine what the dangers are."

Deputy Burt knows what he is talking about. Just this week he was named Law Enforcement Deputy of the Year and also received a Life-Saving Award.

"My son just started driving," he continued. "I told him if you hear a siren anywhere to be ready. If it's behind you just go ahead and pull off the road. By pulling off you might start a chain reaction. You be the leader. People may see you pulling over and they'll start pulling over. You be the leader and help out."

"People need to realize that by pulling over they may be helping to save the life of a family member or a friend," Burt said.

Richard Morrison, Assistant Chief of the Sun City Center Emergency Squad is all too familiar with the problem. He battles it on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.

"It's bad," he said. "We haven't had any accidents but it's going to happen some day, it's always a possibility."

Morrison pointed out that the problem is more than just apathy on the part of the public. "We realize that many people have reduced hearing, reduced eyesight and visibility," he said. "But when you hear a siren start to move to the side of the road. Florida law says that you pull to the side of the road, which ever side you are on. That can give us access down the middle."

Despite her years of experience, Barbara Ebel-Van Hoek, a paramedic with the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Squad in Ruskin, has not become immune to the dangers apathetic drivers present to her job.

"Part of it is that cars are so well made today that they can't hear us," Van Hoek said. "But to be honest, we come up on cars with their windows down and they don't move. Some people don't pay attention when they drive and some people don't know what to do. We can get behind people and lay on the air horn and they won't get out of the way."

Van Hoek fully appreciates that the dangers of an emergency situation are not only to the victim but also towards the rescue crew.

"Some people seem to think that it's not my emergency so they don't think anything about it. But it's dangerous, particularly for the people in the back working on a patient. I've had to go the opposite way against traffic but I really don't like to do that."

As far as the driving public is concerned, Van Hoek repeated the same suggestions made by Burt and Morrison, when you hear a siren pull over. As a person on the front lines of emergency driving, however, she expanded a little on the advice.

"Some times if people would just stop that would help," she said. "We had a gentleman last year that pulled over but didn't stop. He was driving along in the grass at 45 miles per hour right along side of us. I wish I could ask people why they don't just stop."

Van Hoek appreciates the change in attitudes the public has taken towards rescue workers since 9/11. But she hopes that attitude will carry through to helping them do their jobs. "Now especially, we're emergency workers and we're on high alert," she said. We have to be careful and this job is scary enough as it is."

Regardless of whether the cause is apathy or simply that cars are too well made, the increase in traffic on our roads is creating a situation where the public needs to take a moment to think. They need to think about that frantic mother or the elderly spouse watching her husband of many decades die while waiting for the rescue workers to weave their way through traffic.

It could happen some day, it will likely happen some day. Of course at danger is not only the injured child or the elderly man, it also includes the rescue workers doing their job to help.

Van Hoek summed it up in a simple sentence. "A dead paramedic can't save lives," she said.