BY ANNA MANESS
EMS calls with Georgetown ambulance dispatches, 2015-24 Dispatches include ambulance responses to motor vehicle accidents with injuries, a fire department official said.
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The bottom line
The GFD serves 140,000 people, which currently equates to 20,000 people served per fire station. If an additional station is not added by 2030, that number would increase to 30,000 people per station, Sullivan said at the February City Council meeting. “That’s not really a doable mix,” he said. “It’s far too many people for us to have emergency service providers respond to.” Bunte said the department has discussed placing teams of paramedics in areas with high call volume to help with response times. If the department is unable to keep pace with demand, Sullivan said his department will be honest about response time expectations. “We’d like to save a life, but when we can’t save a life, we hold the hand and we try to comfort and love on the family,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to do our best.”
The majority of the department’s staff are cross-trained as both firefighters and paramedics, Sullivan said. Fountainwood resident Kyla Elston’s mother has been fighting ovarian cancer for over a decade. As a result, Fire Station No. 5’s medical team has made multiple visits to her parents' home near Indian Springs Road over the past couple of years. “We’ve never waited over seven minutes,” Elston said. “Of course, I wish it was shorter, but being realistic, I think it’s an excellent response time. It’s shorter than I would actually anticipate given all of the growth and the traffic and the red lights.” As an ETJ resident, Elston said she believes in adjusting expectations for first responders given her distance from city services. “I chose to live outside the city limits, and then [I] get mad at them because they can’t get there fast enough?” Elston said. “That’s unreasonable.”
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NOTE: THE NUMBER OF TOTAL 2024 AMBULANCE DISPATCHES MAY DIFFER FROM THE NUMBER OF 2024 PRIORITY RESPONSES DUE TO CALL RECLASSIFICATIONS AND DISPATCH SYSTEM DISCREPANCIES.
Elston said every experience she’s had with the department has been positive. “They’re really good at what they do,” Elston said.
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