10/20/2020
For anyone who isn't sure how essential a high quality local paramedic ambulance service is, I invite you to consider this...
I've been a paramedic for a long time, and have run more than 12,000 calls over the course of my career. In 1993 I helped organize Trinity County Life Support as the nonprofit local service it remains today. Although I'm no longer affiliated with TCLS, as a resident of their service area I remain an enthusiastic supporter.
My family has had occasion to call for TCLS three times over the past few years, each time for my mother-in-law, who lived a full life until age 99. In every case, TCLS provided exactly the care Mary needed, delivered promptly and skillfully by crews who also demonstrated exceptional compassion.
On one of those occasions, Mary collapsed unconscious in front of me. Because of my own training and experience, I was not about to carry her to my car and drive her to the hospital. As soon as I determined she was breathing and had a pulse, I called 9-1-1 to request the ambulance, then returned to her side to care for her. I knew I could not drive safely while maintaining a constant assessment of my patient and intervening if she stopped breathing.
Many people believe they can drive a critically ill or injured family member to a hospital, however that often has such a poor outcome that many hospitals have a slang term for it: "Canopy Code". That refers to patients who are delivered by private auto under the emergency department driveway canopy in cardiac arrest ("Code Blue") because their vital functions couldn't be maintained during the car ride.
Others believe they can just call for an EMS helicopter from Redding. Although a wonderful resource, their response times to Trinity County are typically 20 minutes or more, they are often unable to fly to us because of weather or heavy smoke, and are sometimes tied up on other missions. Their charges for service are typically more than $30,000, and health insurance often pays only a small portion of that. I urge our neighbors to keep that in mind as they cast a vote to pay $45 per developed property.
To put it bluntly: There is simply no substitute for a nearby paramedic ambulance. The crew can arrive promptly, provide immediate stabilizing care, and deliver the patient safely to a hospital or helicopter, often in better condition than they were found in.
In TCLS our communities have the added advantage of a locally managed nonprofit service with more than 25 years of experience. They are not distracted by desires to expand into other counties, make profits at the expense of quality service, or cut corners to focus on other aspects of their business. EMS is all they do, and they do it well.
TCLS has spent a quarter of a century supporting our communities. They have earned the support of those communities. They already have my family's Yes votes on Measures H and I. We hope they can count on our neighbors for Yes votes, too.
Larry Masterman, MICP
Weaverville
