For motorists in Key West, getting around town amid detours and congestion related to the North Roosevelt Boulevard project means delays and frustration. To emergency responders, it can mean life or death.
Firefighters and ambulance personnel say they are adjusting their customary routes and routines in creative ways to keep response times short.
Ambulances
One of the most directly impacted is Care Ambulance, whose drivers often leave Key West in haste with patients en route to Lower Keys Medical Center on Stock Island. Care's contract with the city requires response times of no more than eight minutes.
With the challenges created by disrupted traffic patterns, the company is staging ambulances and crews in strategic areas around the city instead of keeping them at its New Town headquarters, said Care Operations Manager David Erwin. Care typically puts three ambulances with six paramedics on the streets on a regular day and all together employees 33 emergency responders, including 11 part-timers who also work for Key West Fire Department, two off-duty Key West police officers and one offduty 911 dispatcher.
"With a staff like that, they know the town and the best way to get around," Erwin said, adding that Florida Department of Transportation and the city manager's office have also contributed in the last 12 months of planning.
Staging ambulances has worked out thus far, and paramedics have been able to keep response times down, said Erwin.
According to Care data, the ambulance service received 39 calls between Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and the longest response time during that period was six minutes and 36 seconds. Erwin said it represented a typical call list for the paramedics.
Special devices also have been installed in ambulances and fire trucks to help navigate through traffic congestion. The devices use a GPS system that changes traffic lights when emergency vehicles approach, Erwin said. "It's been a time-saver for us," he said.
Erwin summarized the approach to getting off the island in one word: South Roosevelt Boulevard.
"We're trying to avoid Flagler Avenue wherever we can, and anybody who lives in town can see why," he said. "Getting from the Outer Mole Pier to the hospital can be hard, but that's where staging comes into play, and so far South Roosevelt Boulevard has been pretty open. Most of the bottlenecks are on Flagler."
Firefighters
Just as Care crews worked closely with the state Department of Transportation and city staff months in advance, so too were firefighters, who had already mapped out alternate routes throughout the island, said Division Chief Craig Marston.
Fire trucks obviously can't make a right anymore out of Station 1 on North Roosevelt Boulevard, but crews have moved some fire trucks from headquarters there to Station 3 on Kennedy Drive, where the turning radius is much larger, Marston said.
Marston used the hypothetical example of a fire on the 2100 block of North Roosevelt Boulevard.
"In that scenario we would probably have one apparatus come north from the Kennedy Station down North Roosevelt Boulevard, and a second engine would come from Station 1 around First Street and up Patterson Avenue," he said. "We've researched all these areas and how to best access them in much the same way we go about researching those little Old Town high-density lanes. We always look at the worst-case scenario, such as its Fantasy Fest, cars are double-parked, some streets are closed - all those things are factored."
Fire crews are still maintaining an average three-minute response time on calls, Marston said.
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