State of Emergency

City paramedics' predictions of a summer from hell came true.

Mike Newall

The 911 call came into the Fire Department's communication center shortly after 10:30 a.m. last Tuesday. Quyzir Davis, a cherub-faced 3-year-old boy with wide brown eyes, lay unconscious on the sidewalk outside a playground at 20th and Estaugh streets. He was unresponsive, and his internal organs were battered and bleeding. Quyzir's caretaker, 26-year-old Alethia McKee, hovered above him, yelling for help, claiming the boy had fallen off the jungle gym.

It was a typically hectic morning at the communication center, a cramped, windowless room in the basement of the fire administration building. Emergency calls were flooding in and available ambulances were dwindling.

By the time the Davis call arrived, there were about five ambulances available in the entire city. The ambulance stationed in a firehouse six blocks away from where Quyzir lay dying was already in use. A first-responding fire engine was dispatched in its place and arrived within three minutes. Firemen began CPR and offered basic medical treatment — unlike paramedics, they are not trained in intubation, a medical technique that can more effectively restart a patient's breathing. Nor are they equipped with the drugs that can chemically kick-start a heart.

About six minutes passed and the speeding ambulance was still two to three minutes away. Firemen decided to break protocol and transport the dying youth to Temple University Hospital in the back of a police cruiser. Doctors were unable to revive Quyzir. At 11:21 a.m., he was pronounced dead from "blunt force trauma." McKee, the caretaker, has been charged with murder. Police say she beat the child and tried to pass his death off as an accident.

A dozen paramedics, firemen and dispatchers familiar with the case told City Paper that the boy's injuries were so severe that the advanced medical care an ambulance could have provided on the way to the hospital would not, in all likelihood, have made much of a difference. Still, they say, the incident illustrates how thinly stretched the city's EMS resources have been this summer, with the department routinely operating with only a few available ambulances.

"Everybody did all they could on that run," said one paramedic. "There's just not enough resources."

"We've been running out of squads on a weekly, if not daily basis," adds paramedic Lou Rosmini, a nine-year veteran. "It's been the worst summer I've seen."

Things got particularly rough during the midsummer heat wave, when call volume shot up.

"We had 20 straight days of 90-degree heat or worse," says the dispatcher. "The department deployed a few extra ambulances to help out, but we were still running out of squads or coming damn close to it every day — sometimes for five minutes, sometimes for an hour."

According to paramedics, daily runs have increased from about 650 a day a few summers ago to about 850 a day now.

In a recent cover story ["Emergency Breakdown," Mike Newall, May 12, 2005], dozens of paramedics described an EMS system in severe duress and warned that the city would be in for a dangerous summer if the department did not take action.

At the time, Fire Commissioner Ayers said that eight additional ambulances would be permanently deployed sometime this summer.

"If there is an EMS crisis," said Ayers. "It will end when with the eight new squads."

But the ambulances have yet to be deployed. The Fire Commissioner's office did not return numerous calls for comment to explain why.

Many paramedics compare the addition of eight ambulances to putting a Band-aid on a gaping wound. They feel that the ailing system calls for wide-ranging reforms, such as abolishing the city's use of part-time ambulances — 12 of the city's 40 ambulances go out of service by midnight — and instituting a call prioritization system that better determines the seriousness of calls and assists in deploying more appropriate means of transportation.

Besides, says David Kearney, a paramedic and board member of the local firefighters union, there are not enough paramedics to staff new ambulances anyway. Feeling overworked, overstressed and undersupported by the department, paramedics continue to quit at alarming rates. There are currently 254 paramedics, leaving 59 vacancies that need to be filled.

Local 22 President Brian McBride says the union will be holding two town-hall style meetings later this month for paramedics to air grievances and possible solutions.

"The system is broken and it needs to be repaired," he says. "It's going to take a huge overhaul."