The city of Sammamish is now the home of Eastside Fire and Rescue’s latest medical aid vehicle. On Aug. 1, Eastside Fire and Rescue, along with the Bellevue Fire Department and King County Emergency Medical Services, announced the addition of the Medic Unit 21 to the Medic One system.
The vehicle will be located at EFR Station 83 in Sammamish and will help to provide faster and more effective Advanced Life Support (ALS) services to the area.
Eastside Fire and Rescue Captain Steve Westlake said that when they get two or more calls, response times can be slow due to not having enough resources to attend to each call as quickly as possible. The new unit will help them cover the area more effectively.
“This unit will assist covering back to back calls, to when Medic 14 from Station 73 goes out, the next closest unit was out of Redmond or the Eastgate station, this will help augment that gap between the two,” he said. “It’s already proven, Medic 14 has been out and Medic 21 will respond in their place; it reduced the ALS response time greatly, it helps with getting people more care quicker.”
ALS units provide more intense care, including the use of needles and breathing tubes.
“The medic units have intubation, whether cardiac or diabetic, or respiratory issues they can give the advanced drugs that they carry; they have more advanced cardiac monitoring,” he said. “We used to call them a hospital on wheels … they try and stabilize the patient before we load them up and take them to the hospital.”
Westlake said the addition of Medic 21 in Sammamish mirrored the addition of other medic units. Because they saw a need to cover the area, they were able to implement the new vehicle, similar to how a unit was placed at EFR Station 87 in North Bend.
“Before Medic 3 (in North Bend), the closest was Medic 2 out of Eastgate; as the population got older there were more population and more calls, and that included going up to the Snoqualmie Pass. It dictated a unit being put out in North Bend, that’s how all the medic units work in all of King County,” he said.
King County partners with other municipal fire departments, like Bellevue, Redmond and Shoreline, to help manage the Medic units. The Bellevue Fire Department manages five units, two within their city and three outside of the city, including Medic 21 in Sammamish and Medic 3 in North Bend, Westlake explained.
The current operation of Medic 21 is only set to be a six month study to see how the unit operates out of the Sammamish location.
Response times in the face of more calls and congested traffic will be examined, Westlake said. Once the six months are up, EFR will collect the results and make a decision on how to proceed based on that.
Sammamish Deputy Mayor Christine Malchow and Mayor Bob Keller got to learn about the operation of the vehicle at the media event on Aug. 1. (Courtesy Photo)
