As we had the Americans over here, they gave it to the German (Bavarian) Red Cross. Northern Germany was occupied by British, they gave it to the fire department. East Germany was occupied by the russian - nobody cared about... (just kidding)
DangerousDave wrote:My county, here on the East coast, has 4 paid(36K/Yr.) paramedic "First Responders". They drive tax payer paid Chevy Suburbans with red light racks. Also, we have a bunch of hicks manning the volunteer, and/or paid Emergency Crew/Fire Stations. My county just recently bought a brand new 279K Engine, and it is well manned, by 14 authorized driver/fire-fighter personnel, including girls.
I´m well interested in US-EMS - but also proud of ours as we have not the paramedic system only. We also respond with an emergency doctor (= Notarzt) to the scene. Starting ER doctors treatment right at the scene.
I´ve been at Miamy Beach Fire Rescue and NYFD also for a visit and spent a day with their paramedics.
Pretty cool. Still have my shirt and sweater from NYFD...
We don´t realy need First Responders over here as every 15-20 km is a EMS station with ALS ambulance, emergency doctors car w/ another paramedic as driver, every 100km a life flight helicopter with paramedic and emergency doctor (total amount of 107 helicopters all over little Germany)
Early BO105, the pilotes are all former Army (Bundeswehr) or police/border patrol pilotes. Doing sometimes "crazy" landings
The fleet is replaced with:
Eurocopter EC135
Our Helicopter station here:
http://www.drf.de/lrz-ochsenfurt.html
Right opposite of our house
A ALS ambulance has to and will arrive with 7-12min (depends to state law) at every place.
First Responders aren´t faster. We also have some over here, fire deparment want to increase their runs so they "forced" to get alarmed in case of medical emergency also. But at 98% we are faster and arrive before the First Responder. Sometimes we overtake them while driving...
As we had a US-Army Hospital over here, I was familiar with american (army) EMS.
http://www.wuerzburg.healthcare.hqusareur.army.mil/
We visiting each others and had dinner there. They had this very cool Army Ambulances:
but with blue light racks, red cross and star of life on them with a civilan intenrior inside, not the Army four stretcher!!!!
See the little flick I made as an on-scene-coordinator when US patients arrived at US hospitals ER.
The Army never respond to calls, this was done by German EMS only, also in/on US installations
