Purpose:

To establish guidelines for transferring apparatus and personnel during Ski Season to maintain the highest level of readiness possible for the increased Station One incident volume.

Policy:

Typical staff allocation shall consist of five career personnel distributed among two stations. One primarily assigned to EMS, one to Fire, and a roving officer position.

During Ski Season, the additional personnel shall be station at Station One if possible.

Once the Station One EMS Crew responds for an incident, the Station Two EMS Crew will stand-by until a transport decision has been made by the Station 1 crew. If a transport is going to be made, the Station 2 crew will transfer non-emergency to Station One. For this purpose a crew will be defined as an AIC (Attendant in Charge), a Driver, and a transport unit. When a shift is at full staffing level and a second transport unit is at Station 1, discretion may be used by the on duty officer to transfer a driver and response vehicle only for the 1^st transfer. This will allow the 2 career staff to remain in each station until a 2^nd transfer is needed.

In the event that a 2^nd transport is required, personnel from Station 2 will transfer to Station 1 non-emergency in a transport unit. If available, a full crew should be transferred.

Depending upon the volunteer staffing for the day, components of the fill-in crew may come from the mountain. If possible a full Volunteer Crew should respond from Station Two in order to maintain complete Fire/Rescue coverage. Use officer discretion.

Fill-in crews will report to Station One unless they need to deliver a driver to the pending call.

When filling quarters, the crew will remain available for calls until released by the appropriate personnel.

This policy will be implemented by Administration based upon occupancy and weather and will end upon their request. It is possible that this policy will be in place for all of January and February.

Ski Season Activities Dispatch Protocol

The purpose of this modified dispatch protocol is to greatly reduce the number of times Wintergreen must tie up the only Nelson County emergency frequency to dispatch a ski related call, which often results in a patient refusal.

When a dispatcher receives a call regarding a ski activity patient, during the normal hours of ski operations, the dispatcher will activate the busy signal on Wintergreen Fire 1. The dispatcher will announce “Wintergreen Rescue, Respond to (Location) for a (Brief Description)”. Examples may include:

· Wintergreen Rescue, Respond to Ski Patrol, for the head injury.

· Wintergreen Rescue, Respond to The Dome, for the wrist injury.

· Wintergreen Rescue, Respond to Prior’s Porch, for difficulty breathing.

The on-duty crew will either acknowledge the page on Fire 1 advising a unit will mark-up momentarily or respond to the incident. If the unit already has a volunteer driver on board, they will mark responding “with a full crew.” If the announcement is not acknowledged, the call should be toned following normal procedures.

Once the crew reaches the patient, or additional information is gathered, the crew may contact the dispatcher and ask that a driver be paged using the base radio at Ski Patrol. To do so, the dispatcher will follow the normal toning procedure for Wintergreen Rescue, and simply state that a driver is needed to respond to Station 1. The duty crew on the call will meet the driver at station 1 unless otherwise indicated by the Captain or crew on scene.

If the dispatcher senses the call is urgent, or the Ski Patrol is requesting a helicopter, the “full assignment” should be toned immediately. In other words, the call would be toned using standard procedures.

Once a request is made for a driver, if appropriate, fill-in crews will start moving.