Fixing D.C.'s dangerous ambulance service

By Harry Jaffe Examiner Columnist

A frigid wind blew hard across the RFK Auxiliary Field on Saturday, Nov. 22,
when girls' soccer teams from Wilson High and School Without Walls met in
the city championship game. Running and stretching, 22 girls peeled down to
their soccer shorts and did battle.

The score was tied at 1 at the end of the first half. About 12 minutes into
the second half, Wilson's Aleesha Woodson and SWW's defender Kony Serrano
both jumped high in the air to head a ball. They collided, heads knocking
with the sound of two coconuts, and fell to the hard ground. Woodson got up;
Serrano did not.

Parents and coaches covered Serrano with blankets. We could see her legs
twitching. I called 911 and walked to the field's entrance on Oklahoma
Avenue to make sure the ambulance could find the obscure field.

I waited. Five minutes passed. Five more. A cop car cruised slowly to the
scene. I heard one siren, then two. Twelve minutes after I called, an
ambulance and a firetruck arrived. Emergency technicians from the ambulance
stabilized Serrano, strapped her head to a stretcher, loaded her into the
vehicle and drove to George Washington Hospital, all the way across town.
She suffered a concussion and has recovered well.

I was left with two questions: Why did it take so long to arrive, when the
Engine 8 Firehouse is 10 blocks away? And why bring a fire engine to help a
soccer player with a concussion?

Let's say the ambulance was busy, or it got caught in traffic, which might
explain the 12-minute trip. Fine. But why waste gas and manpower and time to
send a firetruck?

The simple - and equally bad - answer is that in D.C., the emergency medical
services is part of the fire department. The investigation into the horribly
botched treatment of New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum, which
contributed to his death after a mugging, pointed out problems of having
ambulances merged with fire services. D.C. Federation of Citizens
Associations and other activists have called for separating the two. Yet
Adrian Fenty has decided to continue the disastrous marriage.

Kony Serrano's injury turned out well, but minutes seemed like hours as we
watched her legs twitch and it looked as if she was having a seizure. No
doubt an ambulance alone would have gotten to the scene faster.

Two years ago, when Fenty first took office, he gave hope to reformers and
activists who implored him to liberate EMS.

"Rather than trying to resole an old shoe," Citizens Association Vice
President Ann Renshaw testified, "D.C. EMS should, once and for all, be
reorganized as a separate agency."

Fenty likes to say he wants D.C. to run like a "big city." Most major cities
- and Bethesda - have separate ambulance and fire departments.
It's time for him to make EMS its own agency, before we have another
Rosenbaum debacle, or a soccer player's minor injury turns major.

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