Living on Vashon, we make some sacrifices, giving up things like easy access to the Seattle area and cheap gas. Another thing we sacrifice is the kind of emergency medical response we might get on the mainland. It’s not that the paramedics and EMTs who work on Vashon aren’t just as skilled. We simply can’t achieve the level of coverage one might see in the city. Living on an island means it could take longer for medical help to show up at your door in an emergency or it could be more difficult to get an ambulance ride to a hospital.
Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) always has responders on duty, but emergency calls sometimes come in clusters. For instance, one September evening a few years ago, the station got five calls requiring ferry transports to hospitals within 90 minutes — a rare spurt of emergencies. One of the last emergencies was during a high school football game. A member of the opposing team suffered what seemed to be a neck injury, but no ambulances were available to take him to the hospital. The player lay on the field for 45 minutes while responders tended to him, waiting for an ambulance.
This is an extreme example, and it should be noted that patients who need to can always get off the island quickly via helicopter. But it’s an example of how on an island, our resources can quickly run dry. Almost once a week, VIFR puts out a call for all its responders — paid, volunteer, those at home — to report for duty because the station may run out of manpower.
Do we want our fire district to have more resources? It’s a question we haven’t asked in some time, and certainly not since the island’s medical emergencies and number of ferry transports have risen.
The fire district is right to closely involve the public in its long-range planning, particularly because the effort could result in a proposal to raise taxes. But it’s also right to say the effort is not one simply to raise support for taxes. The station has a significant budget, and it does a lot with it. It has improved response times in recent years by making changes to its volunteer program. It believes it will also improve service with upcoming changes to the paramedic program. Most people aren’t aware of the agency’s inner workings. The public is now tasked with looking at the current state of the district and deciding whether we’re willing to continue with a certain amount of risk when it comes to medical response or if we want more reliable service. And, as district officials have noted, taxes aren’t the only way to achieve that.
Hopefully VIFR presents its information in an unbiased but useful way, giving context to the data it is collecting. And hopefully the public participates in the process, providing the feedback the district needs to chart this important course.
