January 15, 2020 — The ambulance crisis in Mendocino County has a unique effect on each community. Fire protection districts, which rely heavily on volunteers who are qualified to provide basic medical care until paramedics arrive, have been acting as a stopgap healthcare service for a long time. That’s because it can take a while for an ambulance to arrive at a remote location. The ripple effect has an impact on firefighting capability, too: when too many ambulances are on call, spending hours transferring patients out of the county or from facility to facility, a paramedic-trained engine team in Ukiah switches over to an ambulance, reducing the number of available firefighters.
We’ll hear from Chris Wilkes, the Fire Chief at the Little Lake Fire Protection District, and John Noyer, the Fire Chief of the Brooktrails Township Fire District, about their thoughts on the ambulance shuffle, how it affects them, and what they think are the main problems and contributing factors.