Party-prepared

Monday, Dec. 20, 1999 | 11:31 a.m.

Southern Nevada medical emergency workers say they are ready for anything and everything on New Year's Eve -- from treating fat lips from drunken brawls to delivering many new millennium babies to addressing life-threatening injuries.

And while a concentration of medical services will be on the busy Strip, health officials say locals in need of attention from paramedics in ambulances to doctors in hospitals will get equal consideration and care.

"On a normal weekend night we operate 20 to 25 ambulances, but on New Year's Eve there will be about 50," said Pete Carlo, a paramedic for American Medical Response and the coordinator of the ambulance company's Y2K readiness operation.

"Twenty of those ambulances will be on the resort corridor. It is a big fallacy (that all or most of the ambulances will be used to care for tourists on the Strip). No way will we deter from our responsibility to the citizens of Las Vegas or their calls for service."

Still, planning for care on the Strip, where trauma incidents figure to be much higher than normal given the mass of humanity that is expected, took up much of Carlo's time in recent months. He drew up the triage plan that is being funded and implemented by the Clark County Health District.

"We will have five triage tents with medical personnel including physicians, nurses, paramedics, EMTs (emergency medical technicians) and EMTIs (the I is for intermediates) in the back of hotels along the Strip," Carlo said.

"The purpose will be to alleviate the impact on area hospitals, which already are near-capacity."

Carlo, who declined to release the location of the tents for security reasons, said ambulances on east-west roads off the Strip will transport patients to the triage areas.

There it will be determined which ones need to be sent to area hospitals for critical care and which ones can be patched up at the tents then sent on their way.

Patients in obvious need of critical care will skip the triage process and be taken by ambulance straight to area hospitals, Carlo said.

"We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst," said Ann Lynch, spokeswoman for Sunrise Hospital, the closest medical facility to the Strip.

"We are doubling our staff and, if it is necessary to call in those who are on-call, our worst case scenario is that we will triple our staff."

Davette Shea, a registered nurse who is director of emergency, trauma and transport for the University Medical Center, says her hospital's staff also will be double that of a normal weekend night and, if necessary, could triple in size.

"We have been well tested in the past with disaster procedures," said Shea, noting that UMC, the county hospital, is the busiest in the Las Vegas Valley when it comes to trauma and burns.

"We have three mass-casualty event drills per year and at least two such actual events each year."

Carlo noted that with AMR's sophisticated computer dispatch center, "we will distribute (patients) as evenly as possible to all of the hospitals" to avoid overtaxing any one medical center's resources.

The health district and AMR teamed up to purchase $30,000 in extra supplies for the ambulances operating on New Year's Eve. That night, each ambulance will carry triple the number of normal supplies, Carlo said.

In addition to the 50 AMR ambulances, five ambulances and personnel from volunteer organizations will be operating to help meet medical transport needs.

Each Clark County Fire Department truck and ambulance also will have at least one paramedic or EMT aboard, Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said.

"Last New Year's Eve from 10 p.m. to midnight we had 200 emergency calls, which is a normal number for a 24-hour period," Leinbach said. "Last New Year's Day, we had 600 responses from midnight to 3 a.m. This year we are expecting it to be even busier."

In addition to gearing up for trauma cases, area hospitals and ambulance personnel are bracing for a busy birthing night as women vie for the distinction of delivering the first babies of the 21st century.

"We figure our maternity ward will be real busy," Lynch said. "We have contingency plans for overflow areas for labor and delivery and we will have extra staff on hand."

Shea said the same is true for UMC. However, she said, "no labor will be induced" for the purpose of having a novelty New Year's baby. Many doctors who regularly deliver New Year's babies commonly induce labor with safe drugs so they can hasten the baby's birth seconds after the stroke of midnight.

"On average, we have 450 babies born here a month," Shea said. "We are expecting a 50 to 75 percent increase in the number of births (of a normal night) on New Year's."

Shea said the postpartum area will be utilized for the overflow business.

Ambulance operators say they also figure on participating in a birth or two from women who misjudge the time between their contractions before heading to a hospital.

"If a woman in our ambulance is ready to give birth at Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, then we will be ready to deliver her baby at that location," Carlo said. "We may even get pregnant women who come to town to celebrate that night and (unexpectedly) go into labor. It's happened before."

In addition to the 20 ambulances on the Strip, two others will be on Fremont Street, two more will be stationed at Primm, four will be in Laughlin and five will be at special events at Strip resorts and the Thomas & Mack Center that figure to draw huge crowds.

Hospital and ambulance workers also plan to be out in force on New Year's Day night as large numbers of revelers figure to again take to the streets to celebrate the long weekend holiday.

"This is a big responsibility for all of us who will be working," Carlo said. "People's welfare and lives will be in our hands."

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