Fire school wants EMS on standby

Bedford County Emergency Medical Services' growth plan calls for closing down its Academy Station, on the campus of Tennessee Fire Service and Codes Enforcement Academy, in order to move its personnel closer to highly-populated areas and reduce response time.

But officials of the fire school say they must have emergency medical personnel on-site in order to conduct live fire training.

The BCEMS board of directors voted Monday night to give notice that it is closing the Academy Station in mid-April, but will discuss ways that personnel can still be placed on-site at the times the state needs them. That could require additional funding, and so the county mayor's office will be brought into the discussion.

The BCEMS growth plan, which has been discussed for many months, calls for closing the Academy Station in order to open a new station in the old Unionville fire hall and eventually another station in the Cascade School area, on expansion property now owned by the county.

Renovation of the Unionville station is already more than 75 percent complete, according to discussion Monday night, and architect John Davis is scheduled to meet with BCEMS Director Chad Graham on Thursday to discuss the best placement for the Cascade station.

In addition, BCEMS plans to build a new headquarters and station near the new site for Bedford County Medical Center. BCEMS is still studying whether to put the station on the hospital site itself or on land offered by Wal-Mart Distribution Center. The existing BCEMS station on Union Street would remain open but would no longer be the administrative offices for the department.

BCEMS officials say the changes will help put ambulance crews closer to population centers in the rapidly-growing northwestern and northeastern portions of the county, reducing ambulance response time -- which can be critical in some types of medical emergencies. For the month of December, BCEMS averaged a response time of five minutes within Shelbyville -- but 12 minutes outside Shelbyville. Those additional seven minutes could mean the difference between life and death for someone in cardiac arrest.

But in order to staff the new stations, BCEMS will have to close the Academy station, and that has state officials worried.

TFACA Director Roger Hawks attended Monday night's BCEMS board meeting to express his concerns.

"Obviously, we got into the discussion of planning too late," said Hawks. Hawks said he realizes that BCEMS isn't going to throw away the money already spent on the Unionville station, and so there's little hope of preserving Academy Station as a full-time, round-the-clock ambulance station. But TFACA still needs some sort of medical personnel on site for approximately 1,400 hours a year of live fire training. Most of those hours are on Friday afternoon and evening or during the day on Saturday.

A letter to BCEMS from Assistant Commissioner of Commerce and Insurance Emmett Turner notes that the National Fire Protection Association requires medical standby for all live fire training. Just exactly what constitutes "medical standby" is open to some interpretation, but Hawks said there have been "a couple of deaths" nationwide during fire training exercises, and since that time fire training schools have tended to err on the side of caution in having medical personnel standing by.

Graham told the board that it would be feasible, but would require additional funding, to put an ambulance on the Academy grounds during fire training exercises, similar to the system under which local schools and the Celebration pay BCEMS to have an ambulance on call during sporting events.

The contract between BCEMS and the state for the use of Academy Station calls for 90 days' notice of cancellation by either party. The BCEMS board voted Monday to formally give notice to the state, while at the same time expressing its great appreciation to the state for allowing BCEMS to use the facilities. The board voted separately to study how best to provide medical standby services to TFACA. Board members Larry Hasty, Joe McCurry and James Darden were appointed to a study committee. In addition, the county mayor's office will be kept informed of the discussions.