Medical calls swamp Fire Rescue
Matt Gaffney, district chief of Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, was a guest speaker at Tuesday’s Lake Worth Commission meeting, giving his annual update.
Last year, Gaffney said, Fire Rescue received 8,952 emergency calls. Of those, 7,405 were medical and 155 were fires.
For the past five years, Fire Rescue has seen an increase of about 600 calls. “There’s just been an inundation, mostly medical calls, and not just in Lake Worth,” he said. “It’s across Palm Beach County, and we’re seeing it everywhere.”
Response times to calls have gotten slightly better and have fallen from 5 minutes and 38 seconds to 5 minutes and 36 seconds. “That’s due to an effort we made the last two years to improve response times by improving chart-out times, which is the time we take from the time the call is received to the time we get out of the station,” Gaffney said. “We’ve really put an emphasis on it, and the results are showing.”
Several stations, including stations 91 and 93 in Lake Worth, also have new vehicles, which Fire Rescue recently bought. “We budgeted a number of rescues every year to keep us up to date and as advanced as possible,” Gaffney said.
Fire Rescue also has a special operations department with two hazardous material teams. They do everything from search and rescue to hazardous materials response dive rescue. “We have a pretty good trauma system in place,” Gaffney said.
Fire Rescue was created by a state law in 1984 to provide fire and emergency medical services to portions of the unincorporated area and select municipal areas of the county.
It has hired 400 people in the past five years, Gaffney said. “There will be even more as people like me retire over the next several years,” he said. “The workforce is getting younger and younger.”
Fire Rescue also maintains a large staff of educators who do everything from hurricane planning to CPR. “We’re teaching civilians what to do when they have a medical emergency in front of them,” he said.
Eighty to 90 percent of what Fire Rescue does is medical, versus fire. “That’s a trend nationwide ... we’re trying to find the people who are falling through the cracks that need product care of social services,” Gaffney said.
Fire Rescue has a full-time social worker to bridge that gap, finding the help people need beyond a 911 call, Gaffney said. “Every dollar that is spent on emergency rooms, it can be prevented by getting them care at home.”