Emergency crews apparently passed test in Strip crisis

David Kihara

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 10:04 a.m.

When a car mowed down more than a dozen people on a sidewalk along the Strip during the 5 p.m. rush hour on Wednesday, it provided a real-life test of emergency response capabilities in the most crowded tourist corridor of the valley.

And it appears that emergency crews passed the test with flying colors: They arrived at the scene under the national average for response times.

The Clark County Fire Department, Metro Police and private ambulance services all arrived at the scene less than 10 minutes after being dispatched and in some cases arrived in under five minutes, officials said.

Bob Leinbach, spokesman for the Clark County Fire Department, said the quick response time is attributable to the experience and well-prepared firefighters and emergency responders.

He added, however, that the response teams likely wouldn't have reached the incident at Las Vegas Boulevard just south of Flamingo Road if the accident occurred in heavier traffic.

"This would have been worse on a Friday or Saturday night," he said. "But we have good, experienced people. This is what we do."

Clark County Fire was one of the first emergency responders on the scene. They received an emergency call at 5:19 p.m. on Wednesday and arrived at 5:24 p.m., Leinbach said.

The national average for fire departments to arrive to a scene of an incident is six minutes, he said, and the times are broken down in this way: On average, it should take one minute to process the initial emergency call, one minute for the fire department to receive the information and get out the door, and four minutes are reserved for travel time.

One reason the county firefighters arrived on the scene so quickly was that it has a fire station, No. 18, located on Flamingo Road near Paradise Road, a stone's throw from the Strip. It has the personnel and experience to react to accidents, fires or medical emergencies up and down the Strip and in the surrounding area, Leinbach said.

In 2004 Station 18 responded to 21,734 incidents, according to the fire department's annual report. The next highest was Station 15, which responded to 9,147, the report stated.

The Clark County Fire Department responded to a total of 99,343 incidents during the year. More than 72,000 were medical emergencies, the report stated.

Only 3,615 responses were for fires, and the remaining 23,000-plus incidents were technical rescues, false alarms or others, the report stated.

Average response time to an incident in 2004 was 6 minutes five seconds, according to the report.

Metro Police also arrived at the scene in under five minutes, said Metro Sgt. Chris Jones, spokesman for the police department.

He said Metro received the first call at 5:18 p.m., and within two minutes officers arrived, he said.

Metro's officers have "sector beats" and there are Metro officers who patrol the Strip on bicycle and foot, he said.

The ambulance service MedicWest arrived on the scene in under 10 minutes of receiving the first emergency call for help, a MedicWest official said.

Cathy Hayes, vice president of administration at MedicWest, said the ambulance service received the first call about the collision at 5:29 p.m. and the first ambulance arrived eight minutes later at 5:37 p.m. Within the next 25 minutes another six ambulances arrived, she said, adding that four arrived before 5:44 p.m.

The average response times for a MedicWest or AMR ambulance reacting to a 911 call is 8 minutes, 59 seconds, Hayes said.

She said that MedicWest posts at least two ambulances on the Strip, which are used to respond to any incidents that come up. One is stationed at the parking lot of a McDonald's on Las Vegas Boulevard, near the New Frontier.

"They don't just like McDonald's food," Hayes said.

MedicWest sent a total of seven ambulances and AMR dispatched 10 ambulances, officials said.

According to Gerry Hart, Director of Operations for American Medical Response, the initial response request was received at 5:20 p.m. requesting 10 ambulances to respond to a multi-casualty incident in front of Bally's.

AMR responded with 10 ambulances, with the first ambulance arriving on the scene in 5 minutes, 33 seconds, he said.

AMR declined to comment further on the response times of its ambulances.

One reason their resources aren't drained during a major injury incident like the collision on Wednesday is because of the amount resources both ambulance companies have. AMR has a total of 67 ambulances in its fleet and during peak times -- 3 p.m. to midnight -- it has 40 vehicles in the field or ready to respond to emergencies, said Steve Kramer, a supervisor with AMR.

MedicWest, meanwhile, has a total of 42 ambulances and during peak times it employs 28 units, Hayes said.

The hospitals that received the injured -- UMC and Sunrise -- also provided services quickly and efficiently because of experience and adequate trauma staffing levels, hospital officials said.

"The bottom line is, it went very well," said Dale Carrison, director of emergency services at UMC and the chairman of the Nevada Homeland Security Commission.

Carrison said the training and expertise of the trauma staff -- as well as the experience -- made for smooth handling of the incident, he said.

For example, even though the staff was handling the patients that had come in from the Strip collision -- including at least two in critical condition -- the team also took one critical patient who came in who was injured in a different incident, he said.

Carrison said that it was too early for a formal critique of the emergency response, but medical advisory board will likely discuss any lessons to be learned from the incident when it meets on Oct. 5.

He said UMC on a typical night has two to three trauma incidents, so the incident on the Strip was not problematic for the hospital.

"If there had been 20 (injured), we'd be fine. Even if there were 30 we'd probably be okay. But if there were 120 we'd be strained," he said.

In such an instance, the Clark County Office of Emergency Response would begin implementing multiple plans, such as distributing the injured to various trauma hospitals in the valley or even setting up mobile hospitals, depending on the emergency, he said.

Carolyn Levering, plans and operations coordinator with the Clark County office of Emergency Management, said the incident Wednesday did not reach the threshold in which the office of emergency management would get involved.

"If an event were to overwhelm the day-to-day capacities (of first responders such as ambulances or the fire department), then that is the type of incident to engage the emergency management plan," she said.

Emergency management plans would be implemented if the first responders are overwhelmed, or if there was a terrorist activity or a chemical spill, she said, naming just a few of the scenarios in which the county would get involved.

While emergency responders are the first on the scene, some questioned if additional safety measures on the Strip would have prevented a car from driving onto the sidewalk and hitting people.

Bobby Shelton, spokesman for the Clark County Public Works, said the incident on the Strip was highly unusual and as such it is not prompting the county to consider installing any sort of pedestrian safety guard rails or other devices to prevent vehicles from driving onto the sidewalk.

"There's never been a need to look at it," he said. "We build roads for people to drive on the street."

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