Commissioners discuss emergency care, ambulance availability

Milam County Commissioners addressed the issues surrounding emergency care in the county during a meeting Monday.

Several citizens spoke on the topic of the need for additional ambulances in the county including Rockdale Fire Chief Herbie Vaughn and Bill Whitmire.

Milam County Judge Steve Young said last Friday the coalition of the county, Rockdale and Cameron wrote AMR demanding that the existing contract be immediately adhered to.  On Tuesday, Aug. 24, AMR responded to the demand and a meeting will be held early next week between the coalition and AMR to discuss the matter further.

“I am going to speak on behalf of all of the fire departments in the county,” Vaughn said. “I have given the commissioners some numbers from the Rockdale Fire Department and Milano as far as call volumes. There have been several times were we have been at level zero, which means no ambulances in the county whatsoever.”

He said that AMR is responding to calls, but the biggest help in the county is the PHI air ambulance. But there are other issues with that.

“When AMR is not there to load the patient we have to get them to a landing zone to get them in the helicopter, which means trying to travel to that landing zone,” Vaughn said. “Lots of times we are doing that in our own vehicles and we are not first responders so our vehicles are not set up for that. This is no fault of the crews, we have fantastic crews on these ambulances, but we don’t have enough of them.”

He said he knows that will cost money, but something has to be done.

For the complete story, pick up this week's Cameron Herald or click here for our E-Edition https://publisher.etype.services/Cameron-Herald