"New" Columbine paper

[FoughtFyr]

No earth shaking revelations but there is a new on-line article on the EMS response to the Columbine High School shootings as a model for Tactical EMS response. It is available here:
http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijrdm/vol5n1/columbine.xml

- H

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[FoughtFyr]

Come on, no one has any comments?

- H

 

[leviathan]

Come on, no one has any comments?

- H

Well, how about your comments?

1. The fact that the gunmen were firing on EMS personnel was a scary thing to read about, and I wasn't aware of that fact. Not overly surprising to hear it in this day and age, though.

2. I'm impressed by the rapid and multi-layered response that was produced in such a short amount of time and I suppose it is a reflection of the preparation and also problem-solving nature of the EMS field. I wonder however, how well this response would have been had their propane bombs detonated and a mass casualty incident developed over just a multi-casualty incident. Things were pretty bad but we can be thankful they weren't a lot worse.

3. It sounds like they had just recently implemented EMT-Ps into their response services, so that was definitely a good and lucky thing.

 

[12R34Y]

Very impressive article....They faced the problems that plague every EMS agency in the country. COMMUNICATION and ORGANIZATION between EMS, fire and police. After columbine my service did a lot of interagency training, but they were still chaotic at best. Everyone is on different radio frequencies and the importance of truly UNIFIED command becomes obvious.

Many lessons were learned, but overall I think the response was outstanding considering no one had ever encountered such an incident before.

nice article though.

later

 

[hakksar]

Well, how about your comments?

1. The fact that the gunmen were firing on EMS personnel was a scary thing to read about, and I wasn't aware of that fact. Not overly surprising to hear it in this day and age, though.

2. I'm impressed by the rapid and multi-layered response that was produced in such a short amount of time and I suppose it is a reflection of the preparation and also problem-solving nature of the EMS field. I wonder however, how well this response would have been had their propane bombs detonated and a mass casualty incident developed over just a multi-casualty incident. Things were pretty bad but we can be thankful they weren't a lot worse.

3. It sounds like they had just recently implemented EMT-Ps into their response services, so that was definitely a good and lucky thing.

1. Yeah, I sorta knew (I did search and rescue on a team that can also do ride alongs with LFD and I rode with him a couple of times) one of the Paramedics that responded on Rescue 13 and I know he was pretty shaken up by being being fired upon. They pretty much had to scoop and run just because of the gunfire. However, they did an extremely professional job.

2. It was an impressive response . . . they did a good job of initiating the Incident Command System. The biggest problems seemed to be coordinating police and fire and not so much coordinating with other fire or EMS agencies(and this is just my opinion from living in Littleton and knowing some of the people who were there)

3. Actually LFD always has had Paramedics. However, they used to only staff Paramedics on Rescues. Some stations do not have any rescues and only have Engines or Squirts. Just before Columbine they redistributed their Paramedics so that every station would have a Paramedic on its apparatus (to improve ALS response time in areas that were covered by stations without rescues). I doubt this would of made a difference at Columbine though because station 13 which is by far the closest to Columbine always has had a rescue and because pretty much the entire LFD was involved in this incident (on top of that station 11 which is the next closest station always had a rescue as well).