Heat and Holiday Weekend Kept EMS Volunteers Busy (appeared in Summit Observer 7/15/99)

The July 4 holiday traditionally includes a variety of activities and emergency calls for members of the Summit Volunteer First Aid Squad. This year, however, the heat and humidity of the past week have prompted a noticeable increase in calls for the squads services.

Squad members have provided Independence Day coverage at the daytime field activities as well as fireworks for many years; and for the past 2 years, have included the Squad’s EMS bike team. This year, the recently formed Summit Police bike patrol joined in coverage of both events. The bike teams were called into service twice to locate missing children. A Summit police officer located the 5-year old boy reported missing on Saturday and a squad volunteer located the 3-year old girl reported missing during the fireworks display.

On both Saturday morning and Sunday evening, the heat took its toll on those attending as well as some of the police, fire and EMS personnel covering the events. The squad was on hand with water, Gatorade and cold towels for those suffering from varying degrees of heat exhaustion.

Late Saturday night, after arriving at a "routine" motor vehicle accident on route 24, crew chief Ken Herr found 6 patients complaining of a variety of neck & back pain. Off-duty squad members responded with Summit’s 2^nd and 3^rd ambulances to assist. A few minutes later, an emergency call was received for a woman with difficulty breathing on Canoe Brook Parkway. Because of the urgent nature, 1 Summit ambulance left the accident scene to respond while a mutual aid ambulance from the Chatham Emergency Squad was requested to assist on Route 24. All 7 patients were transported to Overlook Hospital.

After arriving at Overlook, squad volunteers assisted the emergency room staff in removing a young man with a head injury from a car that had been driven to the hospital. At about the same time, the Berkeley Heights Volunteer Rescue Squad arrived with a woman in severe respiratory distress. What had begun as a relatively slow night for Overlook’s Emergency Department, quickly changed as they received 9 patients within about 15 minutes.

Power outages affected portions of Summit on Monday & Tuesday, including the Squad headquarters, which lost power for about 2 hours. A back-up generator is available to keep the squad in operation. On Tuesday, the squad responded to 5 calls that were directly related to the heat, including an older woman in an apartment with no air conditioning and a letter carrier who experienced a mild heart attack.

Squad volunteers responded with 2 ambulances on Thursday night to assist with the evacuation of a 29-unit apartment building at 45 Woodland Ave. A dangerous electrical situation prompted the Fire Department to order the evacuation of the dark, hot building.

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