DANBURY -- People dial 911 for everything from paper cuts to gunshot wounds -- they want an ambulance, and they want it pronto.
The department often responds with a "code 1" with lights and sirens blaring but then find the situation isn't life-threatening.
In a city where the population tops 100,000 during the work day, the probability of a car crash involving an emergency vehicle is high.
"We just don't want to kill anybody," Curran said.
But now, with better-trained dispatchers and an eye toward preventing emergency vehicle crashes, fire department and EMS officials are looking to temper emergency responses.
The goal is to increase the number of "code 2" responses, where emergency vehicles respond with the flow of traffic.
Emergency service drivers are dealing with more calls for service, more traffic and more bad drivers on the road, Deputy Fire Chief Phillip Curran said.
"I'm not saying we want to knock off 50 percent of the (code 1) calls, but we can back a lot of it down," Curran said. "If you call in that you cut your finger and that you're bleeding real bad or you broke your leg, it may not be life-threatening. What you need is a ride to the hospital," Curran said.
"With calls like that we want to go to code 2 -- to go without lights and sirens and with the flow of traffic."
Fire trucks -- 22 tons of steel traveling at 45 miles an hour -- and ambulances can inflict heavy damage to cars and the people inside.
However, it's not just civilian motorists in danger.
Crashes are the No. 2 killer of firefighters nationwide, according to statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The U.S. Fire Administration says some 6,000 firefighters a year are injured either responding to or returning from an incident.
EMS workers in ambulances, meanwhile, have a fatality rate of 12.7 per 100,000 workers -- more than twice the national average, according to federal statistics.
Although official government statistics are hard to come by, an estimated 20,000 accidents a year involve emergency vehicles.
The International Fire Service Training Association reports some of the most common causes of fire tanker crashes include reckless driving by the public or excessive speed by the emergency responder.
In Danbury, an EMS Oversight Committee meets at the fire department each month to review calls, brainstorm ideas and determine if there is a way to tweak protocols to reduce the number of fire trucks and ambulances racing through the streets.
The decision whether to respond with a code 1 is mostly up to the 911 dispatcher. It is a big burden.
In Danbury, dispatchers receive emergency medical dispatch training that helps them quiz callers to determine what type of response is warranted.
However, that is easier said than done. Callers in the middle of emergencies aren't always articulate.
"More and more we are getting sparse, vague information," said Patrick Sniffin, communications coordinator of the Danbury Fire Department, at a meeting at the fire department Friday.
The caller may not speak English. The caller may be hysterical and simply hang up the phone -- which automatically results in a code 1 response. Cell phones and third-party calls present problems as well.
In November, the city ambulance service had 581 calls for service, according to Matthew Cassavechia, director of emergency medical services for Danbury Health Systems.
Twenty-eight were code 2 responses. Cassavechia and Curran said the department needs to convert more code 1 responses into code 2.
Sniffin said the committee must delve deeper into the call data. To that end, the EMS committee will listen to 911 tapes next month to learn how the calls were handled.
Dr. Jeff Clawson, formerly of the Salt Lake City Fire Department, is the father of emergency medical dispatching.
Clawson invented the priority dispatch system -- the four-tier system used by dispatchers across the country, including Danbury, to send ambulances and fire trucks to people calling 911.
He said the efforts under way in Danbury are occurring all over the country, but getting fire departments and ambulance companies to change habits isn't easy. It goes against the grain for emergency officials to travel without lights and sirens.
However, things are changing. Clawson said fire department and EMS personnel who have grown up with his system are now supervisors.
"A lot of the guys that were my paramedics back in the 1970s and 1980s are running fire departments now. They understand everybody out there is not dying. They know that the realities of going (with) lights and sirens have grave, grave consequences."
A department that follows the protocol to the letter should respond to calls without lights or sirens at least 20 percent of the time, Clawson said.
The Salt Lake City Fire Department, where Clawson worked, saw 50 percent of its calls become siren-free.
Officials in Danbury are not looking to hit a target percentage.
"This is a work in progress," Cassavechia said. "The end result will be better service for the people we serve."
Contact Eugene Driscoll
or at (203) 731-3348.
