Firefighters dispatched to assist at hospitals

Marin paramedics aid overwhelmed sites

As some California hospitals scramble to keep up with a rising number of coronavirus patients, state officials are calling on firefighters to help.

The state Office of Emergency Services sent a request to fire departments throughout California this month for firefighters trained as paramedics to work at hospitals that are stretched thin amid the winter wave of the pandemic. In response to that request, two Marin County firefighters have traveled to distant hospitals for two-week assignments.

Central Marin firefighter Bob Craft and Southern Marin firefighter Jim O’Connor, who both work as paramedics for their departments, began their stints as temporary hospital workers last week.

Craft, a 37-year-old Petaluma resident, is working 12-hour shifts that begin at 7 p.m. in the emergency department at Adventist Health Bakersfield in Kern County.

“They needed help,” Craft said in a phone interview. “They have surges of patients that come in, a lot of them with COVID, and they just run out of space and people to take care of these patients.”

The hospital is in the San Joaquin Valley region, where the availability of intensive care unit beds has remained at 0% for weeks, according to state data.

At particularly busy times, hospital wards are so full that patients are placed in beds or chairs in the halls, Craft said.

As a paramedic, Craft has medical training that can make him an asset inside the emergency

room, said Ruben Martin, the Central Marin Fire Department’s interim chief.

Working in a hospital is in some ways “similar to being on an ambulance,” Martin said. “It’s just a different arena.”

Craft said he and the other firefighters working at the Bakersfield hospital have been hooking patients up to intravenous lines, drawing blood and helping nurses flip coronavirus patients onto their abdomens to help them breathe better.

“The majority of our responsibility has been helping the nurses out and making our presence known, whether it’s changing a bed over to get a new patient in or moving patients around,” Craft said.

O’Connor, a 42-year-old

Grass Valley resident, is also working 12-hour overnight shifts on his assignment at Sutter Health’s Memorial Hospital Los Banos in Merced County, which is also in the San Joaquin Valley region.

O’Connor said staff at the hospital told him the worst surge of coronavirus patients came at the end of December, likely as a result of Thanksgiving gatherings. The number of patients has declined each day O’Connor has worked there, he said, but the hospital is gearing up for another surge associated with holiday parties.

One of O’Connor’s duties is to assess patients as they arrive to determine whether they have coronavirus symptoms. Those with symptoms are taken to a tent outside the hospital before they are brought inside to areas where coronavirus patients can be kept

separate from those who are not infected.

O’Connor has also worked shifts in the intensive care unit and the emergency department.

“Their ICU beds are full,” he said. “They have no more, so they’re having to put patients into the medical surgery department, which isn’t normal.”

California firefighters are accustomed to working wildfire assignments around the state during fire season, but being dispatched to hospitals is unprecedented, said Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber.

“There’s so much strain right now on the health care system that it makes sense for us to be involved,” Weber said.

Firefighters in Marin are also administering coronavirus vaccinations at the Marin County Civic Center in an effort to speed up the county’s vaccine distribution effort. On some days, as many as 20 firefighters are giving shots at the vaccine clinic, according to Weber.

“We’re trying to balance right now with all the support that’s needed,” Weber said.