NCFPD to staff Rainbow fire station with captain paramedic

The North County Fire Protection District (NCFPD) board of directors on June 28 voted unanimously to move forward with a resource deployment trial that fire chief Stephen Abbott believes will result in positive changes in the district's operations.

"One of the things we're most excited about is we will be putting captain paramedics out in Rainbow," said Abbott, who said three captains will be working on a shift basis at station six (2309 Rainbow Valley Blvd.) beginning in mid July.

"Having that staffing out there in Rainbow is a big deal," said Abbott. "That will be a new thing for us, to get that paramedic care into a rural community that didn't have it immediately."

Abbott said the Rainbow station has historically been a 100 percent volunteer station, with staff primarily made up of young Emergency Medical Technicians who have some basic fire training but are early in their fire service careers.

"One of the challenges is many of them don't necessarily have the time and the certification and qualification to operate the apparatus," said Abbott. "You can't just drive around a 30,000 or 40,000 pound fire apparatus – you have to know what you're doing and that just doesn't come over night. And secondarily, getting a paramedic license is a rather long process.

"So by moving a captain paramedic out there, we really get the best of all worlds," continued Abbott. "We get some supervision on a day-to-day basis, we get somebody that can operate the apparatus, and we get somebody that's a certified paramedic. Currently, they're getting paramedics from station four (4375 Pala Mesa Dr.), which depending where you are, is roughly eight to 10 minutes further away. So that's a pretty big deal."

Abbott said the district also plans to make more use of its "squad" vehicles.

"Rainbow is going to be giving us one of their squads," said Abbott. "A squad is basically what you might call a 'quick attack' or 'mini pumper.' It's basically a pickup with a flat bed and skid-mounted pump and some compartments with your basic equipment. The idea is, it's very quick and maneuverable."

Only two firefighters are needed to man the squad, which means remaining station staff is available to handle other calls.

"We'll be putting folks on that squad to handle emergencies throughout the community," said Abbott. "With your basic medical emergencies, which are really about half of our medical runs, you don't necessarily need a whole engine company there. So if you can get by with just sending a squad, then that keeps the engine company available for the bigger calls, or the next call.

"So we're dividing up our personnel differently rather than keeping everybody on fire engines, which has kind of been the traditional model since, really, when I got here 26 years ago. The squad concept, ironically, is where paramedics started about 40 years ago – if you remember 'Emergency,'" said Abbott, referring to the popular 1970s television show about paramedics in the LA County Fire Department.

Abbott said the squad will be strategically positioned throughout the day based on system status management.

"The idea is, if you know that historically you have certain areas impacted at certain times, you move resources down to cover the area," said Abbott. "As a simple example, our downtown area gets pretty inundated during the afternoon commute hours, so it's not at all uncommon for our resources from our stations to be pulled in that way."

Although system status management has been around a long time, Abbott said it became even more important when Fallbrook Hospital closed in December 2014. NCFPD has five ambulances and operates three ambulances 24/7. With no local hospital, those vehicles are spending a lot of time out on calls and logging many miles.

"Our resources are gone longer so we have to be able to be a little more fluent in our operation," said Abbott.

NCFPD was awarded a $1.1 million assistance for firefighter grant from the Dept. of Homeland Security last year and used some of the money to purchase an ambulance.

"We added an ambulance to the Bonsall area, to our new station five (5906 Olive Hill Rd.)," said Abbott. "We're burning through our ambulances very, very, very quickly with the closure of the hospital. We've doubled and in some cases tripled the mileage on those things because everything is now a 30- to 40- or even 50-mile roundtrip drive."

Abbott, who is on the board of directors for Fallbrook Healthcare District (FHD), said NCFPD has received grants from FHD to put toward a new ambulance and emergency medical equipment.

"We were given $100,000 from Fallbrook Healthcare District towards the purchase of another ambulance, which is basically half of an ambulance," said Abbott. "We received $30,000 for an AutoPulse automatic chest compression device that dramatically improves the effectiveness of CPR, and a 12-lead EKG monitor/defibrillator for use in expanding our paramedic services. We really owe them quite a bit."

Abbott said he is very pleased with how the resource deployment trial is working out.

"As we looked at our response configuration, as eluded to in the trial, we recognized we might be able to rearrange the furniture a little bit and come up with some more efficient models that will more effectively help us address our response times," said Abbott. "The idea of redeploying our resources and making them more efficient is really a very exciting thing for us."