For Washington Parish fire departments, a crucial piece of equipment is the AED, a defibrillator that’s carried in ambulances. The device is used to try to save people who are experiencing sudden cardiac arrest.
The device can be used to deliver an electric shock, called a defibrillation, to help the heart reestablish its rhythm.
AED are used in the parish by fire departments, private ambulances, and emergency rooms on a regular basis.
In Louisiana, many of the AED devices are owned by the state and are provided to fire departments and other emergency responders.
Last week, for a while it appeared that the state was going to remove all of its AED devices and have them returned to Baton Rouge.
There was an outcry among volunteer and municipal fire departments across Louisiana, and Washington Parish was no exception. Local fire departments in the parish said a policy of basically repossessing AED’s would prove to be highly dangerous because until emergency responders could replace the devices, their ambulances would be without this critical piece of equipment.
But the outcry was loud enough and widespread enough that someone in state government ordered the collection of the devices be halted, at least for now.
In an email sent to emergency responders by Molly Terebieniec, Ambulance Standards Coordinator for the Bureau of Emergency Services, she wrote, “Your frustrations and concerns have not been taken lightly. Your concerns were brought to the decision makers and we have been given the directive to temporarily stop AED collections.”
Her email indicated that the planned collection of the AED devices had something to do with state inventory control. Now, rather than returning their AED devices, emergency responders have been asked to send in a photo of their device along with its state property tag number and some other information.
Brandon LaSalle, chief of the Franklinton Fire Department, breathed a sigh of relief. He explained that losing the AED device would have required the fire department to quickly attempt to find a replacement.
LaSalle and other fire department officials across the parish noted that many emergency medical calls involve cardiac issues.
Because of that it is very important for each ambulance in the parish to have an AED.
One Washington Parish fire department volunteer commented, “This is the sort of unhelpful stuff that comes out of Baton Rouge. We’re out here in the field handling emergency calls, and someone decides to do something like this.”
For now, the problem has been allievated. But LaSalle and other fire department leaders in Washington Parish cannot take cardiac emergencies for granted, so they will be looking for back-up AED devices, just in case.
