Scott & White EMS Missions

The Scott & White employees made it to Mississippi early Saturday morning and have been working very hard for the past 2 days.  They have been involved with several missions of moving patients inland for the coastal areas of Mississippi.  Today, they have been staging at one of the local hospitals anticipating the arrival of 70 patients to be triaged and placed in the hospitals or shelters.

Scott & White EMS have also been called to action in Texas as well.  We sent 1 ambulance with staff to the Austin airport to assist with the movement of 200 "special needs patients" to the Austin Convention Center.  This mission is only expected to last throughout the evening hours.

Thank you,

Chuck Pearson

Task Force and Strike Teams

After a longer than anticipated downtime, our folks are on the roll again.  Phil has been named a Strike Team Leader.  Under him are five groups of five ambulances.  Each ambulance group has a Task Force Leader and three of our staff have been named Task Force Leaders, one from CEMS, one from REMS and on from HealthLink.  Each crew member reports to their Task Force Leader who in turn reports to the Strike Team Leader who then reports to the EOC.

Our group is now headed for Beaumont, TX, 283 miles east of their current location or 87 miles east of Houston, Texas.  It is anticipated that they will be allowed to bunk down for the night (at this time it seems that their ambulances will serve this purpose) and will get actual assignments tomorrow morning.

Currently the eye of the Hurricane is just south of the western edge of Cuba and has been upgraded to a category four hurricane.  The Weather Channel is now predicting that it will intensify to a category five once it reaches the Gulf of Mexico but may later be downgraded to a category three.  Needless to say the storm has the strength to cause major devastation to the area of landfall.

Update

We are currently between Little Rock and Texarcana.  Collectively we have traveled over 12,000 miles today without incident so far.  I have been in contact with NATCOM and we are expected in San Antonio after midnight.  Please keep us in your thoughts. 

Phil Koster - Team Leader

We Are On The Way

We have been activated!  Our crews were called to service at 9:00 PM last night and left at 4:00 a.m.  We will be staging at the Alamo Regional Command Center (ARCC) in San Antonio, Texas awaiting further orders. A total of 10 ambulances were deployed along with a non-emergency van and a "team leader" vehicle with supply trailer.  In total we sent 23 rescuers to assist with evacuation and emergency operations if needed.

Preparations For Response

Community EMS, HealthLink Medical Transportation, Beaumont Medical Transportation, DMCare Express and Regional Medical Services (of Michigan) along with Community Ambulance Service of Ohio and Scott & White EMS of Texas are preparing for an emergency response should FEMA request aid in preparation of Hurricane Gustav.