Emergency Medical Services

Laura Shiloh made history yesterday when she was named the first female battalion chief in the 149-year history of the Baltimore Fire Department. While accepting the promotion, she praised the department and conceded that it has had its share of difficulties recently. "I love my job. I love the department. I know it's been going through a lot of bad things lately, but I couldn't imagine working anywhere else," she said. This summer, an independent investigation concluded that a fire recruit who was killed in a training exercise had been poorly trained and outfitted.

Firefighters at Station 7 in Columbia rushed to the same nursing home three times during two recent 24-hour shifts. Only one of those 911 calls - for a patient in "respiratory distress" - was a true emergency, crew members said, but firefighters still took all three residents to a hospital by ambulance. "Sometimes we're more of a transportation service [for these facilities] than an emergency service," paramedic firefighter Jeffrey King said. As the population ages, fire departments across the region are faced with a growing demand for ambulance services from long-term care facilities.

When the calls came in requesting emergency medical help, police say 24-year-old Rob Smith would throw on an Abingdon EMS coat, slide on a pair of bunker pants, grab his fire radio and head out to the scene to assist with patient care. But Smith wasn't a member of the Abingdon Fire Company nor was he licensed through the state to provide emergency medical services, police said. This week, Harford County sheriff's officers arrested Robert Joseph Smith of the first block of Stevens Circle in Aberdeen on charges of impersonating an emergency medical services provider and theft.

When a young rider fell off a horse during a lesson at Columbia Horse Center this summer, instructor Ashley Davison knew just what to do. "I told her to keep her head still, and I knew the questions to ask to determine if she had a concussion. When the paramedics came, I was able to speak their language," said Davison, 17. Her knowledge and calm during an emergency came from her training with the EMT Academy, also known as Paramedic Pathways, a pilot program of Howard County public schools, the Department of Fire and Rescue Services and Howard Community College.

Charles Edmund Scott, a former human resources director at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital who was active in volunteer emergency medical services and Harford County civic affairs, died of pancreatitis March 24 at University of Maryland Medical Center. The Abingdon resident was 71. Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, he was a 1952 graduate of Catonsville High School and played varsity baseball. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business management at the University of Baltimore, also playing on its baseball team.

George R. Wackenhut, 85, a former FBI agent who built the Wackenhut Corp. into an international security firm that promoted the use of private guards at prisons, airports and nuclear power plants, died of heart failure Dec. 31 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. Started in 1954 as a three-man detective agency in Miami, the struggling company turned to providing guard services to stay afloat and later earned contracts with Lockheed Martin and the Kennedy Space...

Carroll County's 14 volunteer fire companies have joined to oppose a draft of national guidelines that would increase the minimum requirements for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, making it harder, they say, to recruit for those positions. Members of the Carroll County Volunteer Emergency Services Association - a group that represents firefighters, ambulance personnel and fire chiefs - recently voted to oppose any measure that would raise the training level of their overburdened mobile medical teams.

U.S. Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes have joined an effort to stop the Army from eliminating 24-hour emergency medical services at Fort Meade. In a letter Friday to the Army's acting secretary, the Maryland Democrats expressed "deep concern" about a proposal to scale back paramedic services. Under the cost-cutting measure, base paramedics would work from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. The new schedule was supposed to go into effect yesterday, but military officials put it on hold until June 1 to give local officials more time to assess possible effects of the change.

Runaway growth a burden to residents It is disappointing, but not surprising, to learn of the new proposed "fire tax" to cover the cost of fire and emergency medical services for Carroll County. This is one more example of the cost of residential development being born by the existing homeowners, instead of the developers causing runaway growth. As reported in The Sun, a public hearing was held Sept. 22 in Union Bridge regarding the proposed annexation of a 126-acre parcel for a residential development, with another planned development that could triple the inhabitants of our 1,100 population town.

Carroll County's volunteer firefighters have delayed a vote on a revamped proposal for distributing $1.9 million in emergency medical services, choosing instead to ask the county commissioners for more guidance on how to spend the money. The decision to ask the commissioners to specify how the money should be allocated came after firefighters spent nearly two hours Monday night debating - angrily at times - the merits of the latest proposed distribution. That proposal never made it to a vote.