Some more pics from my trip to Richmond. The FD dropped in and told us about their role in prehospital care with RAA. One thing I found amazing is this; Like us in the UK, RAA have a response standard, theirs is 8 mins 59 seconds. But the only thing that stops the clock in Richmond is an ALS ambulance, that's a vehicle with at least one crew member who is a Paramedic. If a fire truck or a RAA field supervisor or BLS ambulance turns up first with in this time it doesn't count. Irrespective if they save a life it still doesn't count. Another thing I found astounding is that Richmond's population size is very similar to that of Southampton in the UK but in Richmond they have 20 fire stations and that RAA put out on average 16-18 ambulance crews daily and about 8 crews at night. This doesn't include the rescue volunteer squads dotted about the city. I know for a fact that there aren't that many fire stations in Southampton and that South Central Ambulance probably don't put out that many ambulance crews during the day.
Richmond FD have a few nationally registered paramedics as firefighters and the FD work closely with RAA.
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In reality, while Richmond is very far ahead in the EMS field, their fire department lags behind when it comes to EMS. They are just now starting to have ALS providers in their fire stations, where most paid fire departments in Virginia have ALS providers on the engine company's.
Richmond FD is a very traditional department, it was not until 1991 until they even started running EMS calls (trained at the First Responder level) then in the mid-90's they started training to the EMT-Basic level, and it has been within the past 2-3 years that they have SOME firefighters at the Nationally Registered Intermediate or Paramedic level.
In my knowledge of Richmond, and with as busy as RAA is, they could defiantly benefit from ALS engine companies.
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