WFTND Blog Information

An emergency manager trying to make a difference.

The name of the blog comes from a conversation with my daughter, where she told me that I was always looking to help people be prepared for the inevitable emergencies in life.

I started this blog as a place to assemble all the information that I was getting every day and to share my thoughts and ideas on emergency management.

I had no idea how much of the blog would wind up being what's in the news. While it does not take a lot to add a blog entry, I just did not realize how much of my day was involved with simply keeping up with what's going on. All of the posts, whether what's in the news or comments or just a piece of information, have a purpose; to get us thinking, to get us talking, and to make things better - in other words, to make a difference.

Hopefully this blog will save you some time and energy, or help you in some other way. If you would like to see something, please let me know.

Posting an article does not imply that I agree with the comments in the article. In fact, in many case, I do not agree, but feel that the comments should be part of the discussion. All opinions are welcome. I only ask that you remain considerate and professional of other opinions.

CLICK ON "MY WEB PAGE" ON THE WFTND BLOG PROFILE PAGE FOR MY LINKEDIN PUBLIC PROFILE

Favorite Quotes for the Emergency Manager

  • “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • “Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • “Failing to plan is planning to fail”
  • “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.” Denis Waitley
  • "Station 51, KMG365."
  • “One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” Arnold H. Glasgow
  • “An ostrich with its head in the sand is just as blind to opportunity as to disaster”
  • “The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” Douglas MacArthur
  • “My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.” Buckminster Fuller
  • “Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”
  • "If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, ..." Rudyard Kipling
  • "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

NEWS CHIEF: Combining fire, EMS services must be considered carefully

In its Saturday issue, the News Chief reported in detail on the proposed merger plan for Polk County Fire Services and Polk Emergency Medical Services. The proposed merger will be studied in a pilot program in a station near Lake Wales, according to the article, but the criteria for studying the program were not stated.

EMS programs in the United States were mostly developed within the fire services from the 1960s. However, there are an increasing number of independent EMS services to the extent that public safety is often expressed as a combination of police, fire and EMS. The question of program quality is important to the consideration and is difficult to assess.

The public calls for EMS services far more than for fire services. The EMS service carries far more potential for legal recourse by the residents served because of the close personal interaction at the scene. Fire service personnel are more prone to consider it as a career decision, whereas EMS personnel more commonly work for a number of years and then move into other health-care channels. In EMS, it is often called "burnout" and is a definite problem in personnel selection and training.

The point is that "cross training" may look simple, but is often difficult in practice because the personnel are, in fact, quite different. Complicating the picture further are present attitudes of the area hospitals, which quite commonly either accept certain patients only or temporarily close their emergency departments to further emergency patients. This further stresses the EMS system.

Serving as an ex-officio member of the EMS medical committee, I can sympathize with the Polk County commissioners and their desire to seek efficiencies in operation of county services. In this situation, I think that basing a decision on a pilot program may or may not help in making a wise decision - unless the evaluation criteria are carefully selected and analyzed.

I believe that an expert consultant's analysis of fire and EMS services over the past several years might offer better information on which a decision might be based. In the end, the decision should be made on the basis of the best service for the least cost, and combining the services may reduce costs by a fraction but also could reduce EMS efficiency by an even greater amount.


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