By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Emergency response can be challenging under the best of circumstances. When you add the cold and flu season where a large number of area residents are already health compromised to a weather event our area does not typically experience, the challenges grow exponentially. Emergencies must be met, and those dedicated to meeting them are often required to work long hours when they might be experiencing sickness themselves because emergencies do not clock out or take sick days.
“Getting to the people who need us is the main thing,” emergency ambulance director Tim Woods said of the recent winter weather that has blanketed the region. “Carter County has done a great job clearing roads, but there has just been so much. We only have a big snow like this about every seven years.”
“Everyone tries to plan for it,” he continued. “But you just can’t plan for this much snow.”
Woods said that they have three of their four-wheel drive trucks on the road right now, and they have put a lot of their backup vehicles on the road to mitigate any interruption in service to the county should one of their vehicles slide off the road and become disabled. The fleet also includes a new truck that was just delivered in December, which is also four-wheel drive. It is difficult to access a lot of county areas without four-wheel capacity, so those vehicles are essential to the response.
Still, Woods said, even four-wheel drive isn’t effective on ice.
“The only thing that really works on ice is tire chains,” Woods said. “If we put chains on vehicles and drove around the hollers it would be great. But once you get out on the road, those things would beat you to death.”
Other dangers would be the problems the added vibration would cause the patients, and at speeds over 35 miles per hour if chains break, they can cause serious damage to the vehicles themselves.
“There are a lot of potential issues with chains, so I’m not a big fan of them.”
There has been some discussion, Woods said, of perhaps installing studded snow tires on the inner tires with the outside wheel being a standard snow tire, at least if another weather event such as the recent one occurs.
“Someone mentioned that as an option, and I would like to try it to see how effective it would be.”
Regardless of the challenges they faced during the storm, Woods said that Carter County Ambulance was able to respond to every call that came in.
“And to the best of my knowledge we did not have to reach out to other counties for assistance,” he said.
“It has been a lot of long hours,” Woods added. “And we’ve had a lot of sickness. The flu has been running rampant, and we are just trying to make it work. We get sick just like everyone else,” he said. “But we still have to show up. It’s not like we can just close up shop. I have to keep a full staff regardless, because in thirty seconds we can have five different calls and use all five ambulances. People depend on us, and we have to be there when they need us.”
Woods said that regardless of the challenges, he is proud of how they have responded.
“I have some good people,” Woods said. “And we work for good people.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
