San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Documenting time of pandemic and protest
Photographer embeds with paramedics to capture a year of lockdown and strife
In early 2020, photographer and videographer Derek O. Hanley set out to document Alameda County paramedic crews at work, believing that emergency medical technicians deserve as much respect for their sacrifices as members of the military do.
He embedded with Falck Alameda County ambulance teams, and, for a while, his project went according to plan. Hanley slowly earned the crews’ trust. His years of medical service, including four as an Air Force paramedic and five as an Army combat medic, gave him credibility — and the batches of fresh-baked cookies he brought for the EMTs certainly didn’t hurt.
But as the year progressed, he witnessed how the events of 2020 — the COVID-19 outbreak, protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, multiple wildfires — became critical parts of the medics’ work life.
Now those long days and nights that Hanley spent with the ambulance teams are documented in his new book, “Photos From the Front Lines: A Year on the Streets of Alameda County.” The book pays tribute to the crews’ sacrifices and also documents the pandemic year, social unrest and the disasters that ravaged the region through the prism of the paramedics’ experiences.
The 500-page book is organized chronologically, beginning in February 2020. Shooting in black-and-white, Hanley, who recently moved from the East Bay to Gresham, Ore., captures the daily routines of this anything-but- routine occupation, in which spraying down stretchers and writing patient care reports are as
“Medics are pretty neutral politically,
especially when it comes to the patients who need our help —
you meet everyone, you see the struggles
they go through.” Derek O. Hanley, photographer
much part of the job as following a blood trail to reach a shooting victim. There are laughs, too — all in a day’s work.
By that month’s end, however,
PHOTOS FROM THE FRONT LINES: A YEAR ON THE STREETS OF ALAMEDA COUNTY
By Derek O. Hanley
(Derek O. Hanley Publishing; 500 pages; $74.99)
he saw hints of what was to come. Hanley shot an “outbreak tent” being set up at one hospital and then, in March 2020, COVID hit. The medics couldn’t shelter at home, and the work put not only themselves but their families at risk. The personal protective equipment shortage made things even worse.
“It’s one thing to go into battle fully equipped. It’s another thing to go in without your body armor,” Hanley says.
Then, not long after COVID appreciation parades during which police, fire and emergency medical teams drove through neighborhoods to
“There isn’t one EMT or paramedic that didn’t appreciate the time and effort that Derek (O. Hanley) put into this project.”
Heidi Nishimoto, retired medical support team commander
visit local hospitals, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against law enforcement. Hanley felt community support quickly disappear for first responders, especially the night he accompanied a crew to a major protest in Oakland.
“Medics are pretty neutral politically, especially when it comes to the patients who need our help — you meet everyone, you see the struggles they go through. But having 7,500 people pour hate and discontent in your direction is a heavy, heavy feeling,” he says. “I see both sides of the coin, man. I don’t like seeing Black folks getting killed, and I don’t like to see cops getting killed.”
Retired Commander Heidi Nishimoto, a tactical emergency medical support team leader Hanley accompanied to a protest outside Oakland Police Department headquarters on May 29, 2020, said she recalled “thinking that these nights would have been a memory that only a few of us shared, and few would know the dangers those nights brought us.” With Hanley’s book, however, the idea that others could get even a glimpse of that time is comforting.
“Derek was able to capture a part of my career that I will never forget,” Nishimoto said. “There isn’t one EMT or paramedic that didn’t appreciate the time and effort that Derek put into this project.”
While much of the book’s action takes place in East Bay cities like Oakland and Hayward, Hanley focused on Alameda County because of its diverse demographics and geography, which ranges from metropolitan to remote rural areas.
“You have shootings and gang activity in the city, but you’re also five or 10 minutes from the closest trauma center. If you can scoop patients up and get them to the hospital, their chances are pretty good. But in rural areas, you really have to be on the top of your medicine because as a paramedic, there’s no backup,” he says. “Dealing with a crashing patient, by yourself, in the back of a moving vehicle for 20 or 30 minutes until you get to a hospital? I don’t really have words for the amount of pressure that someone feels in those moments.”
Matt Jaffe lives on the Central Coast and writes about the culture and environment of California, the Southwest, Mexico, and Hawaii.