If you are experiencing flu-like symptoms which are not life-threatening in nature, please first consider contacting your family medical practitioner or health service provider for guidance and direction.  Also consider private transport to a medical facility or testing location rather than contacting 911.  While we will respond to any emergent request for help, we have limited resources to cover the 108 square miles of our District, and we need to keep our ambulances and our crews available for life-threatening cases that urgently require our care.  (When we transport an individual with flu-like symptoms, both the ambulance and the crew must go through decontamination procedures. During this process, the crew and ambulance will be out of service for an hour or more.)

 

Also, please know that we carry no equipment to test for any virus or infection, regardless of the source, so we are not able to screen or assess patients to determine what their illness is.  For most patients with common flu-like symptoms, our normal treatment is to provide supportive or comforting care while driving non-emergently to a health facility.  In many instances, these non-emergent transports do not require the services of an EMS provider. 

 

NOTE:  before you travel to a practitioner or facility, call ahead to learn what procedures they have in place to address your symptoms (for example, whether they want you to enter the facility wearing a mask or whether they want you to enter through a certain entrance).  This is exactly what we do.

 

We have also taken proactive measures to ensure we are able to serve and protect the public during these times.  All public tours of our fire stations have been cancelled, and our stations are now temporarily closed to the public.  The public use of our training rooms has been suspended, and we are routinely cleaning our stations and apparatus.  We are also working with the County Office of Emergency Management to obtain needed supplies, and we have implemented procedures to protect our staff members.  Moreover, because of the exploding volume of motor vehicle accidents occurring on the interstate, we continue to proactively work with construction project safety personnel whenever possible to limit our 911 responses to those calls which actually require our services. 

 

Thank you for your understanding and support.  Should you have any questions or concerns about our policies or procedures, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@larkspurfire.org.  We will respond to you as soon as possible. 

 

Charles Walden

Division Chief

​

(This information as a pdf file.)