Emergency services in Socorro

The city council and mayor heard a presentation by Jason Everett last week at their regular meeting regarding fire and emergency services.

Mayor Ravi Bhasker introduced Everett as a third party, not directly related to the city, but as the chairman of the Emergency Planning Committee.

“I’ve been after the county to help us with the ambulance, and we are in the process right now of excluding Catron County from our district, and I’m also getting ready to get in the process of excluding the county and just taking care of the city,” Bhasker said, “We’ve asked the county to help us, but really, so far, they haven’t given us a viable choice.”

Everett said he also made a presentation on emergency services to the county last year. He has over 20 years of experience in the emergency medical service field and moved to the area to work at the VLA about three years ago.

“I noticed pretty quickly that things could be a little bit better here. So my intention is not to chide or criticize, but I realized that you may not know, and I had the same feeling about the county and their commission. They may not know what they don’t know. And so my intention is to just raise awareness.” Everett said.

Everett discussed the four tiers of emergency medical responders, with paramedics being the most advanced. They can offer advanced life support and stabilize critical patients.

“We do not have any paramedics in the entire county of Socorro, except Alamo has a paramedic,” Everett said, “And the bottom line is people are dying. Our constituents are dying without this level of care. I don’t know how many. I think we could study that and come up with a definitive answer. I think that we could ascertain the financial damages of every life lost, but I guarantee you that people are dying who would normally live if they had access to this service.”

He discussed the issue of EMTs being out of service to transport stable patients from Socorro General Hospital to Albuquerque. He said that Socorro General Hospital agreed that this was an inappropriate use of the frontline fire and EMS crews and is working on setting up a critical care unit to take over those inter-facility transports.

He spoke to the challenges for fire departments and EMTs, including high call volume, a large response area and inter-facility transfers that strain the department’s resources. Everett identified dispatch issues, including the lack of a formal contract between the city and county, leading to poor communication and coordination. He said a big challenge was keeping the departments staffed.

“Recruitment and retention are challenges in the fire service because a lot of our country relies on volunteers, and my personal beef, why are we okay with that?” Everett said, “We have to find a way to engage with young people, and one of those is to make this a desirable job, is compensation.”

Everett prepared data that broke down the City of Socorro’s fire department over the last three years, including EMS versus fire calls, city versus county call responses, along with the department’s budget. According to his data, about 30% of the calls go out to the county.

He recommended a joint city-county study to gather data and develop a plan to improve emergency services, potentially with the county funding paramedic units to serve rural areas.

He expressed optimism about the new county fire marshal and manager, stating that he had met with the new fire marshal, Fred Berger, and found him committed to saving lives and property in the county.

“If we’re going to fix this, we need to move forward together. That is the message I’m trying to support.” Everett said.

Mayor Bhasker agreed and said that their department budget is under a lot of stress.

“We’ve asked them (the county) to staff three positions without any strings attached, to put into their recurring budget to cover that 30% which is not only the service, but instead of them setting up a certified ambulance service for the county, which would cost at least a million or two, we would be the base for that,” Bhasker said.

Bhasker said in his discussions with County Manager Andy Lotrich he has asked for the county to staff three people.

“The response we got from them lately, from Mr. Lotrich, the county manager, was that number one, it would not be constant. It might sunset. Number two, they wanted us to go to the jail to take care of their prisoners. Number three, they were talking about two staff people instead of three,” Bhasker said.