While watching varied american based stuff on YouTube ect, when someone was having medical issues, instead of the expected ambulance to be called a fire truck came to thier aid. Being from the UK where a fire truck only come for fire or rescue ect if find it odd. Is it actually common place for this to happen in America?
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The firefighters are usually also paramedics, the truck has extra equipment on board that might be useful, and it’s good to have extra manpower available just in case it’s needed.
Because firefighters are also trained in emergency first aid, and many of them are paramedics or EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians).
It’s not uncommon. Firefighters are often qualified EMTs, so if they can get there faster than an ambulance, they may be dispatched. In some locations, the ambulances and paramedics are also part of the fire department.
It’s also common for things like car accidents, where maybe there is no actual fire but firefighter’s tools and expertise are needed to extract someone.
Many firefighters are also EMTs or other level of first responder. They are medically trained and often close to the emergency, especially in rural areas with volunteer firefighters.
Speed of response I assume. The fire station is probably less busy, and they are also trained EMTs so they can stabilize the situation while an ambulance is on the way.
Fire trucks are really water trucks.
Fire truck put out water.
Where I’m from originally, the Fire Department was both for fires and medical response. Although, the Fire Department had their own ambulances so it wasn’t always a literal fire truck that come to the scene.
FYI they’ll send out a fire truck in the UK too. I was out on my motorbike just today and stopped at a motorbike crash (I have CPR/traumatic injury first aid/motorcycle crash first aid training) and two different fire trucks got there before an ambulance did.
Because all firefighters are trained to provide medical aid and trucks carry medical equipment
Where I live, the nearest fire station is much closer than the nearest police station, hospital, etc.
The quick response time can mean the difference between life and death in a medical emergency.
Firefighters often have paramedics on their team and most firefighters are trained in at least basic life support if not advanced. Response times can often be faster for the fire department so they can provide stabilizing care while they wait for the ambulance to arrive in case further care or transport is needed
Beyond the answers that everyone else has (because they’re first responders that handle fires in addition to other stuff) once on my local news radio the fire chief was being interviewed. He was asked why they don’t have some sort of quick response team on motorcycles that can weave through traffic and the chief made the point that a 911 call only reveals so much. There have been times when they thought they were just responding to a medical call but once on the scene it was good they sent the whole rig. There were obstructions or something else that the ambulance alone didn’t have equipment for.
It depends on how local emergency services are set up, but part of the reasoning is that you don’t know who is actually needed until someone arrives at the scene. A call reporting nausea might be someone having a heart attack behind two locked doors which need to be broken down. In some places it’s just easier to dispatch everyone.
Because paid departments need to justify there expense to cities so they run medical calls to get their numbers up.
Fires are way down so having EMT’s on your million dollar engine company helps it easier to swallow for the city.
In my area, it is usually an ambulance, and the police show up. If it is something like a car wreck, the fire trucks also show up. They not only put out fires but also have equipment to cut through the wrecks.
My guess is that, in addition to what others have said about them also being trained in first aid, dispatchers don’t really have time to figure out who or what is exactly needed, considering time is of the essence in emergencies, so they just send some of all departments just in case.
Firefighters are typically trained in various skills to support EMTs. At the very least, they’ll be trained in BLS CPR and lift/carry techniques. Makes them very valuable as extra pairs of hands to help EMTs with more difficult calls. Depending on the department, they may also have Firefighters who are also certified as EMTs or Paramedics and can preform more advanced lifesaving skills on a call.
They won’t deploy on all calls, depending on the information provided to the 911 operator. Any case that sounds like it might be chaotic, CPR is needed, or even just “the patient will need to be lifted onto a gurney” will get firefighters. Calls for relatively simple cases (BLS transport) might just get an ambulance.
Firetrucks are usually a lot less busy than ambulances, they might be able to get there quicker, they almost always have paramedic training or at least know proper CPR technique, and they have equipment that might be useful in certain situations such as busting down doors or cutting open a car.
It’s important to remember that when 911 gets a call they don’t actually know the on-the-ground situation aside from what a probably panicked caller might have told them. If an ambulance goes to a call about chest pain and the caller is locked in their house behind a security door and the windows have bars, they are going to be sitting on their hands waiting for a truck to get there. By the time the Fire Department gets there to pry open the door it might be too late for someone having an MI. Better to just call in a fire truck from the get-go than have an ambulance show up and wait around if a truck is needed.
Fire Fighters are typically also EMTs and can give basic medical assistance until the Paramedics get there. Thy are also more likely to be the first to get there as firehouses are more evenly spaced about than hospitals. They are also there to provide extra muscle for the paramedics if someone needs to be carried out and the rolling gurney will not work (stair, rough terrain, narrow hallways, small doors, etc.)
It is also standard practice to send a police unit in case traffic needs to be stopped or diverted.
The reason why is just in case, sometimes there can be a fire, and when people have been coming out of a burning building, The ambulance is there to take the critical, and the firefighters are there to put out the fire.
I live in the Colorado Rockies. A rural, mountain environment. The medical first responders are associated with the Fire Department. There is no ambulance other than Flight For Life, which I see passing over my house about every other day.
The practice stems from it’s useful to deploy emergency services and even if they aren’t needed at that scene, they can respond to other calls now that they are ready and deployed.
You also never know if an emergency might worsen
In my parents town, all the firefighters are EMTs, so they usually sent a truck in case someone needs an assist.
Also, I’m glad that their town’s first responders have the capacity to over respond “just in case.”
Probably to prevent instances where someone calls and says “we need an ambulance at 123 Fake street, a car crashed!” And then the paramedics show up to find out that the car crashed into the house and the house is on fire.
Everyone else makes very good points about how they are also trained to help, but to look at it from the other side, they’re already being paid to be on shift and thanks to major advancements in technology and regulations, fires are a lot less common than they used to be. You still gotta have firefighters on duty for the ones that slip through, but if they only fought fires, the taxpayer would be paying a lot of people to be on standby most of the time. By getting them to assist with medical stuff too, taxpayer gets better bang for their buck
Need someone tall to hold the IV fluids. And firefighters are better equipped to lift and carry a 100 kilos of dead weight.
In a lot of the US, the local fire department is also the EMS agency. The employees are duel certified firefighter/EMTs so they’ll send a fire truck along with an ambulance for the manpower
Lots of fire departments also house ambulances/paramedics. I assume they send the fire truck and someone trained in emergency medical care if the ambulance isn’t available.
I can answer this one. Many departments do this for manpower. Sometimes it’s hard to get people out of their homes. Have you ever had to cut out a second story exterior wall to have a fire truck crane out a morbidly obese man having a heart attack? Unfortunately, I have. Keep in mind that does not happen everywhere in America. It primarily only occurs in areas with career fire departments. Volunteer fire departments typically will not be dispatched to EMS calls.
In the area I worked as an EMT with the county fire department (all volunteer because that’s a whole ‘nother level of weirdness we somehow still have going on in the 21st century but whatever), we were all just the same unit. EMS and firefighters didn’t always have the same training (for example, I only did EMS work, I didn’t have firefighting training), but we were all part of the same units. Usually what we’d do, though, because of limited resources, was we’d respond and stabilize the patient, then hand them off to a private EMS crew for transport to the hospital. We would transport sometimes though, just depended on the situation. But we could usually respond faster than the private crews could. We would usually just respond in the ambulance, though.
In my current city, I’m not involved with that kind of emergency response, but it seems kind of similar. I usually just see city FD ambulances respond to medical calls, though. I do occasionally see a larger truck, but it’s usually a call where there is a need for traffic control or things like that (eg. a call at a house or apartment building usually only has FD ambulances show up, while if you see a car accident or someone passed out in the road, you might see some other trucks respond to block traffic as well, along with the possibility we may need something like the jaws of life or a car may catch fire or whatever and need a fire response anyway).
YMMV, though. The US is huge and our fire departments/EMS tend to operate very independently, so you’ll even see differences from one county to the other, or from a city with its own departments to the unincorporated areas serviced by the county.
(edited a bit for some details I thought of as I wrote it)