Fire and Ambulance responds to nearly1500 COVID calls

From the period of March to November 2020, the Dominica Fire and Ambulance Service are reporting that they have responded to a total of 1493 covid response cases.

This added to their regular ambulance calls from the period January to November takes the figure to 7399 says Fire Chief Josiah Dupuis.

Presenting an overview on the task thus far, he highlighted, “there  were many logistics we had to get in place for example assigning six ambulances to various  districts so that these ambulances would be able to do specific  covid responses.”

To date, he says extensive training has been done with the Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) with a core of fire officers and such information has been decentralized to the different stations.

“It instructed us in a manner that we knew exactly how we should respond,  how we should sanitize, how we should decontaminate our ambulances, and a lot more. It really forced us into adopting certain protocols that we had not been using before.”

While he noted that there have been some close calls that require fire officers to be temporarily isolated, he revealed that no positive case of COVID-19 has been reported by any of his team members.

“These are the fire officers who respond to calls, whereby the screening, it might indicate as to whether the symptoms are related to covid. These are the fire officers who are responding to accident calls, where this may not be the first thing on their minds. These are the fire officers who are responding to people who are suspects. These are the officers who are responding to positive covid cases, that they know of and are told, and I am just so delighted to know that we have so far been free from any of our officers registering[positive] from a positive covid[case],” Dupuis said.

Speaking o0n some of the challenges, he brought to the forefront that in the early days, there was a lot of fear and panic, however, this was something that management effectively handled.

Meantime, he also announced that for the year thus far, the fire and ambulance service has responded to a total of 367 bushfires and 29 house fires.

As informed, “very early in the year we had several  brush fires and due to the impact it had on the environment it led us to make submissions that speak to our bush fire act and  in time with the approval of cabinet we are hoping that we can see some sort of adjustment in how people address burning for example,” he said, further adding, “We are seriously  concerned over the type of burning practices that we see  across the landscape of Dominica.”

He used the opportunity to appeal to the general public that comes next year to do better in terms of burning practices.