your area

Approx. 10 miles covered on the thruway, its probably the most dangerous location to respond to a call due to high vehicle speeds, narrow shoulders, and onlookers. Motorists tend to disregard the move over law and do not slow down even if weather conditions are poor. We're constantly looking over our shoulders when we are out there.

My agency response area includes Cazenovia College, Cazenovia Lake and at least one industry. The other challenges that we face are that our area covers portions of both Route 20 and Route 92. The other challenge that is faced during the summer is when there is road construction or bridge reconstruction, which affects access to roadway entrances or pass through roadways.

Our response area has a vast variety of occupancy and different mercantile. We have a Resort/Casino, BOCES, high school, grade school, multiple hotels, DSL home, multiple fuel stations, along with three major highways, including the NYS Thruway and a trail rail. Each one of these have unique features for a response and level of care that could be encountered. Due to the level of terrorism in society, some of these places are target points for terrorism. We keep this in the back of our minds during responses to these locations. Along with keeping updated on EMS information and skills, training on terrorism and knowledge of trail rail safety and what is traveling those rails, goes hand and hand. You should continuously train and do table top exercises to get the most beneficial results of your training.

Basically, unless our call happens to be in the middle of town, we are heading up a large hill in any direction. This time of year it sometimes becomes necessary to use chains on the trucks. Which obviously slows response times even farther. The weather on the hilltops is generally much different than in the valleys. The poor road conditions coupled with winding curves and hills in the district, coupled with the people that just won't slow down, you can pretty much count on MVA's whenever it gets bad out. Dealing w/ the Amish is always different. The Mennonites as well, particularly when they speak Russian. Or the Guatemalan's that don't speak any English. You have to use a translation app on your phone. That happened a couple weeks ago w/ a pregnancy call.

Our response area has a little bit everything. It contains both urban and rural areas but also has a heavy commercial area. We cover Sangertown mall, so during rush hour it is very difficult to navigate traffic on Seneca turnpike and commercial drive when there is an emergency on that side of town, response times increase drastically during the winter. Our area continues to grow as they are starting to build up the woods highway area, where the Hampton Inn and The Hartford are located, as well as put in an 162 home neighborhood up that way. A problem area we face every winter is Higby Road going towards Franfort. Going up that hill, the roads ice over quickly and we respond to quite a few accidents up that way. On top of that, we have struggled on some calls getting our fire vehicles up and down that hill in wintery conditions. There have been sometimes where we had to call the town DPW to throw some salt or sand on the roadways for us to get traction to navigate those areas on the hill. We are also mutual aid to many departments that surround our area, so we respond to different types of areas that we may not have in our town/village.

*Repost. I wasn't logged in the first time.

I work for Hamilton College. Our response area is limited to the campus as well as a select number of off-campus residences. A number of others have mentioned hills as a challenge, especially in winter. We're a non-transporting agency, but we definitely hear about coming up to Hamilton from COCVAC.

Thankfully, the student and faculty population is relatively healthy. Extremely rarely do we see violence-related injuries. Pediatric and geriatric calls are unusual, so we have to spend time staying up-to-date in those areas. Our most frequent calls include alcohol intoxication (weekend nights), sports injuries, allergic reactions, chronic conditions, and general illness. We do see a substantial number of stress and mental illness-related calls. Prime time is Sunday night, as everyone prepares for the week ahead.

Scene management is an issue, given how many people live in the dorms, attend parties, etc. Thankfully, we have Campus Safety with us on most calls. They drive our equipment van. We have a great relationship with the officers. They're extremely willing to remove crowds or unruly bystanders as well as help us in other ways. Dealing with crowded, narrow, and messy student rooms proves difficult, especially when we transfer care to COCVAC and the patient is transported to the hospital.

I'm verging on being off-topic, but maintaining privacy is difficult, considering our response area includes only about 1,800 people. The EMTs are students, so it's likely we've seen our patients before. Occasionally, we know them well. News travels quickly across campus. Students see the EMTs running across campus, entering certain rooms, even treating friends. Stories get put together. Maintaining complete confidentiality is difficult but critical.

I work in all areas. Small village in Madison county and city of Utica and surrounding areas. Transporting times in Utica can be only a few minutes, while in Madison County if your going other than Hamilton hospital can take you a while. Sometimes going north deep into Herkimer county, response times can take thirty minutes or more. Taking transfers out of Utica hospitals to higher level facilities can be a nice drive or worst night mare. Trips to Cleveland Clinic in Ohio can take up to 14 hours or longer. Just last night with transfers to Syracuse in the storms. Its always fun trying to bring patients down from a high rise building in a small elevator with all your equipment, partner, and stretcher.