Committee advances bill to merge EMS with Fire Services
After three rejections over more than a decade, the Senate Committee on Health, Hospitals, and Human Services advanced legislation to establish the V.I. Fire and Emergency Medical Services, which integrates emergency medical services currently offered under the V.I. Health Department, with the V.I. Fire Service.
2022-03-10 12:43:15 - VI News Staff
The lofty endeavor was at the request of Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., a Cabinet member in the administration of Gov. John de Jongh Jr., who initially proposed a merger between the Health Department’s Emergency Medical Services Division and V.I. Fire Services. That proposal however failed.
Once Bryan took office, he reintroduced the proposal — and senators twice rejected it, the most recent rejection coming last October.
On Wednesday, VI Fire Services Director Daryl George Sr., who served in the same capacity under the de Jongh administration and widely known to push for the merger, said the transition “demonstrates a commitment to public safety” and the “integration will allow for a more efficient and effective delivery of emergency services with the opportunity for more rapid response time with the strategic deployment of resources.”
At present there are only one to two locations per island from which emergency medical services providers can respond from, but George said the integration allows for the deployment of these crucial services from an additional ten locations throughout the territory.
“This may ultimately save lives,” George said.
The same was said of the development of the training division, which will be headed by James Bolton as the territorial training coordinator.
The training division, George said, “will be key to addressing one of the major issues plaguing our current EMS system, staffing shortages.”
To date, 21 fire personnel on St. Croix District have completed emergency medical responder training, which according to George raises the total number of emergency medical responder trained firefighters to 42.
“We have and will continue to work to increase the number of firefighter EMTs,” George said, adding that firefighters hired from 2013 onwards are required to complete EMT certification.