First Responders follow code of preparedness
BLUE BELL >> When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Montgomery County a year ago, First Responders agencies continued to step up and help those in need.
Centre Square Fire Company, located at 1298 W. Skippack Pike, was no exception.
“We get a lot of car accidents. We get a lot of fire alarms, but really, it doesn’t matter what type of call you’re going on, there’s always going to be that chance of exposure,” said Fire Chief Lee Miller.
While the station’s fire and EMS personnel had previously established guidance for personal protective equipment, the COVID-19 pandemic required additional direction.
“In the beginning, it was very involved just coming up with the procedures and directives for everybody to follow to keep everyone safe,” Miller said.
Those protocols included ensuring the dozens of the station’s active and volunteer members don the proper personal protective equipment, social distance and practice health and safety guidelines to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. Meetings and training sessions were also held virtually.
“It would take one outbreak of multiple firefighters and EMS workers to put us out of service, and that wouldn’t be a good thing,” he said. “We’ve had a few outbreaks here. Nothing that could be tied to jobrelated. We went through the whole tracing program and we determined that it wasn’t job related and we didn’t have multiple outbreaks at one time which was a good thing.”
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, county public safety officials implemented a screening policy for 911 dispatchers to ask callers questions about symptoms and travel in certain medical cases.
If someone in need of assistance presented symptoms similar to COVID-19, the protocol ensured EMS personnel would be prepared to safely respond.
Joelle Lesniak, a firefighter, EMT and captain at the Centre Square Fire Company, recalled similar policies instituted for H1N1 and Ebola viruses.
She said in those cases a “scout” would “go in, evaluate
the patient,” to “see what was needed to try and keep it so there’s less contact overall, less chance of contracting the disease.”
“Even for fire calls we would send a scout in,” Miller said. “We would try to limit exposure to all the volunteers for routine calls.”
“We walk in with N95 [masks],” Lesniak said. “Wherever we get off that truck we’re fully geared
because you don’t know where you’re walking into and who’s got what.”
As cases continued rising across Montgomery County, the area’s First Responders needed to arm themselves with personal protective equipment to safely render care to patients who may have contracted the virus, according to a county memo. Vital pieces included gloves, gowns, eye protection, and
N95 masks.
Nationwide shortages and periods of scarce supplies initially created difficulties for county First Responder agencies.
“[I’m] still waiting for an order to come from our vendor from March that never came in,” Lesniak said. “We got the face shields — the gowns came in, still waiting for N95 masks.”
Andrew De Laney, a firefighter, EMT and captain at the Whitpain Townshipbased fire company, recalled needing to rewear his mask on multiple occasions.
“If you got a mask you held onto it like it was gold, and we’re talking not these cloth masks, [the ones that] were nowhere to be found were N95 masks,” he said. “If you got one, you held onto it as long as possible.”
Lesniak and Miller said the fire company was able to secure additional materials
from the county when needed.
Area residents also rallied around the department with donations ranging from hand sanitizer to food to cloth masks.
“It was quite impressive how the community and businesses reached out to us,” Miller said.
Cases of the virus decreased over the summer, but began spiking again in late fall as the second wave arrived in Montgomery County.
“We were ready then. We knew it was coming and we were ready,” Lesniak said.
Now, 20 Centre Square Fire Company members have been fully vaccinated through the county’s COVID-19 vaccination clinic, including Miller, De Laney, Lesniak, and Michael Barnshaw, a firefighter, EMT and captain, who received both doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.