Design on the Streets, by James Mazza

[Read about Digital Barf's guest bloggers here.]

Let me start off by giving everyone a little bit of background about what I do, and then perhaps the rest of what follows will make sense. I am an Emergency Medical Technician in NJ. I work two different jobs as a simple EMT and volunteer my time as a Lieutenant in charge of all EMS and Rescue on Monday nights for a local town. I am also currently studying to be an RN. Now that we know who I am and what I do, let’s get to talking about how my job has absolutely nothing to do with design while having everything to do with design.

Being an EMT is not all “blood and guts” like most people think. In my estimation it is more like 70% psychological, simply being there, 20% real emergencies, heart attacks, allergic reactions, car accidents, etc, 5% absurd situations and 5 % BS. Depending on who you talk to these numbers likely change and for some dramatically; however, this is how I see it.

When we are in training we are taught the very basics, how to talk to people, carry them to the ambulance, provide first aid and oxygen treatments, perform CPR with the hope of saving a life. These skills are given to us with the express understanding that we will need to improvise and adapt to do things. Our template fresh out of school, a “design” if you will, is very basic and will help us to grow but it is only a start. The one thing about emergencies is that there is never two that are alike. There is always something different. There is always a new windy staircase that someone has to be carried down, or a strange way someone fell when they had their heart attack, or the way the steel on the car twisted after an accident makes getting to the people inside harder than it was an accident or two ago. Our “design” needs to be fluid and ever changing because we never know what we will see and as such cannot be set in stone.

Acting as a supervisor, I had an interesting experience recently that had nothing to do with emergency medicine and everything to do with control and design. With the heat wave, something broke in the electrical grid in my area of Jersey during the time I ride as an EMT/Supervisor as a volunteer. With the power out, two six story buildings containing almost all senior citizens, many of whom were handicapped and on oxygen, needed to be evacuated so that the people would be in a cooler environment where they would not be as likely to pass out or succumb to heat exhaustion/stroke. With no working elevators and only very faint emergency lighting, one can imagine how hard this task would be.

Upon arriving on the scene I immediately set to working with the two Police Officers on scene to begin a systematic search of all the floors, first checking on the people on oxygen and then the handicapped and so on. Members of the paid fire department where there, however they were not as helpful as they could have been, leaving it to myself and the two officers to run the whole show. This was the first time I had ever been thrust into such a large situation before and was expected to take charge of it. Sure, I had been here a few years ago when this same event had occurred, however then I was simply muscle to carry people down the stairs. This time I was expected to be calm, cool, in charge, and to get the people to a cooler climate. That’s a lot of responsibility for a 23 year old who isn’t getting paid for his time!

As part of my training I was required to take courses that would prepare me for Incident Command, a term coined after 9/11 as being necessary for all large incidents. This gave me a background of information to build on, although nothing can prepare you for the moment in which you need to draw upon that sort of training for the first time. Further compounding the problems was the fact that the town I volunteer for has the Paid Fire Department in charge of Emergency Management, which this task falls under in a time like this, however the person in charge of FD did not take charge leaving myself and two exemplary Patrolmen to handle the situation. Not until the Volunteer Fire Dept. members arrived did the FD become truly useful to us in this situation.

With guidance from the Police as to which rooms still needed to be searched, I sent the men and women under my command up to the floors to do a search room by room, floor by floor. We designed a search plan and who would take what floor and then we executed the plan. This incident started at about 10:40 at night and wasn’t over until 3 in the morning. While I did not have to physically work like the rest of the people I volunteer with on Monday nights, being in charge caused me a great deal of work to make sure I kept the information right and passed on the right information to the right people. This being the first time I had to operate in a situation like that, and based on the feedback I got from many people who were there telling me I did a fantastic job, I can only say that the design I was given in training must have paid off in a big way because things were handled without incident.

Some may question how being an EMT has anything to do with design, and rightfully so. I hope the above helps to expand the view on what design there can be, particularly when you see an Ambulance flying by you with lights on and siren wailing. More is going on than meets the eye usually and design plays one of the biggest factors.