At the Clarke County Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, August 4, Mr. Jones approached the board with a devastating event that occurred on July 17 that could have ended in tragic results.
Mr. Jones wanted the board to be aware of the medical situation that occurred after a terrible ATV accident in the Rocky Community when the accelerator on the ATV got stuck causing them to crash into a vehicle and threw the four occupants off the ATV.
“I’m here about an incident that happened on July 17,” described Mr. Jones. “We had some kids—my son and some of my cousins were in a four wheeler wreck—and they laid on the ground in my yard for two hours. Three kids and my cousin, broke up and gashed up, for two hours waiting on an ambulance to get there. First responders came, which some of them at that time were volunteers. They didn’t want to be there or didn’t know what they were doing. That was just unacceptable for them kids and my cousin to be laying out there for two hours—which one of them was my son—in pain, broke up, bleeding from the ears, and it took two hours for the ambulance to get there. First responders got there, like I said. They volunteered, and they didn’t really know what they was doing. Then the ambulance gets there—one of the ambulance gets there, and the lady jumped out like, ‘Oh, where’s the injury?’ There’s three kids and an adult on the ground. It’s just unacceptable, and there just needs to be something done about that. I know we stay in Rocky, which is kind of out a little bit, but still, that’s unacceptable for two hours for kids to be laying on the ground in that type of pain and stuff. If it wasn’t for Toshia, when she got there, to make stuff move, them kids would’ve still been laying on that ground. One ambulance, four people, three of them kids, for two hours, and they still didn’t get out. It took two and a half to three hours and had to go up the road and take them out of one truck and put them in another. That was unacceptable. We had a kid laying there, going out, going in and out, and Toshia and them were over there trying to keep him okay. Let’s just say he would’ve died in my yard. That would have been real bad.”
Although the board was distraught with the situation, they have no control when it comes to the ambulance. Supervisor Darrick Marshall explained how the ambulance service for the county works and addressed that the board would do what they can to remedy the issue.
“The process is, and I’ll explain it to you a little bit, but we don’t necessarily own. We used to own, but the county used to own an ambulance, but we don’t necessarily own an ambulance service anymore,” explained Marshall. “What we do, we do provide a service with money to them, so I don’t know if we have a dog in the fight as far as their time. That’d probably have to be somebody else, but we do a lot of money, so we may could say something to them about that part of it, but we’ll definitely address it to them. We do apologize. We’re glad Toshia was able to go out there and help out a little bit.”
Emergency Management Director Toshia Evans then explained everything that was happening with the ambulance service to the board and expressed just how bad the scene was.
“About this call, what happened was there was an ATV wreck, and the call came in, and Jackie can clarify, it was five injuries, I want to say. It was five injuries,” informed Evans. “Dispatch notified everybody that they needed to notify. They notified Paratech. At that time, Paratech was at Watkins, and they said they had to do a transport, I believe, to New Orleans or somewhere. They didn’t have that ambulance because they were there at Watkins, but the call came in before they left. One ambulance was sent out there, but that ambulance couldn’t transfer four people. That ambulance made it, got one of the kids, got the adult, took them to one of the fire departments down the road, and met the helicopter because we did have to land AirCare because there were some pretty serious injuries. They got there. Once the helicopter landed, the helicopter got one patient. Then, they transferred another patient to Meridian—the ambulance did—so that left us with no ambulance at all. I called back and asked dispatch to please call Metro and see if they could send us some help. Metro did end up sending two ambulances, but once again, you’re way out in the county. I called dispatch again and asked them if they could get somebody to just go get a truck from Paratech and bring me a truck and get these kids loaded up from off the ground. I mean, I’m gonna be honest, they were out there getting eat up—I even got bit up by ants—and they’re literally laying on the ground in serious, serious, serious conditions. We got another ambulance. We got the kids loaded up in that ambulance, and we met Metro because they were out of their district and didn’t know and didn’t know where they were coming; they were just trying to help us out. Dispatch did call Wayne County. Wayne County was in route, but at that time, Wayne County got a call in their district, so they had to turn around and go back to their district to a call. They were really without an ambulance. The call came in about 10:35, and the ambulance didn’t make it until about 12:00. It was a bad situation. Metro sent me two trucks and a sprinter truck, but at the same time with those kids. I had one kid that was just going out, and we were really about to lose him going out, but you couldn’t move him without a backboard, and the backboard was on the ambulances. We had to get an ambulance to us in order to move everybody because they were broken up very seriously. Once I got that other ambulance to bring backboards, I got them loaded up went and met Metro with those kids to get them further assistance and get them stable until they could get to the hospital. If I recall, every one of them got transported to Jackson, and one of them got airlifted from Merdian.”
After fully hearing the details of the incident, Supervisor Joel Speed pointed out an issue that is being faced that greatly contributes to the problem.
“One of the problems that we run into, and truthfully this won’t make you feel any better, but it’s the truth, is that a lot of our ambulance services, including over here, may have two or three ambulances sitting there but don’t have anybody to work them. They can’t get anybody to train and become a paramedic to do it. I know you don’t like hearing this, and I understand that, but if it’s one of those bad case scenarios where you only have one or two ambulances and they’re here and there, and you have something like this happen, you’re in trouble,” expressed Speed. “I’m just being honest on the reason. I know they have begged and pleaded and tried to get people to train to be EMRs and paramedics and EMTs and all that kind of stuff. Then—I’m sure Toshia knows about this—you’ll get this ambulance service, and when you carry somebody to an emergency room, and whoever gets out of that ambulance goes in that emergency room, and the emergency room is full, and that ambulance sits there tied up at that emergency room with that patient laying up in that emergency room on that gurney for three hours, and they won’t release the ambulance. Then, you have one ambulance tied up at the emergency room at the hospitals. They’re inundated, so it’s just a backlog that’s a terrible situation. This is something we can try to address. It’s a tough situation.”
The supervisors intend to do what they can to try and keep a situation like this from happening again, but the whole ordeal shows a huge need in the community.
There has to be more people willing to step up and become EMRs, EMTs, and paramedics so that there are plenty of medical personnel who can assist when an emergency situation happens so that there aren’t anymore cases of children lying on the ground in excruciating pain and serious injuries for hours again.
