'Too many ambulances' overwhelmed Newtown responders

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HARTFORD -- Newtown Police Chief Michael K. Kehoe said this morning that dispatchers "were quickly overwhelmed" by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the quick flood of parents and the news media made it even harder for first responders at the scene.

Kehoe, appearing before the governor's Sandy Hook Advisory Commission with Brookfield Police Chief Robin Montgomery, said that another problem in the early minutes of the school attack, was the flood of ambulances from throughout the region

FULL ARTICLE: http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/Chief-Sandy-Hook-1st-responders-overwhelmed-5277455.php

[BMeehan282 8]

Mike Kehoe is a great guy, and he's working through a lot of things with this incident.

However, here's the thing - All "those ambulances" were requested through the police dispatchers, not from any EMS or Fire unit on the scene. Both Troop A and Newtown Dispatch called Northwest and South Central CMED's and said "send every ambulance you can", which is why you saw all these ambulances from the Lower Naugatuck Valley and elsewhere, and not ones like Stony Hill or Bethel from next door.

He is correct that it would be a good idea to manage all those ambulances, or for that matter the 300 cops that were there, the fire service is really the only discipline that is ready to manage large scale incidents. Just from a common sense standpoint, cops and EMS people are just not accustomed to pulling up to a scene and looking to the guy with the white hat for direction. From a global response standpoint EMS and LE need to get better at entering and operating within an Incident Management System, because those two disciplines rarely are involved with ICS on a tactical basis.

bernie

[Dinosaur 844]

I think we all need to get better at implementing incident management, not just police and EMS. First responders globally (to use your word) only implement a fraction of the entire process and to assert that police units should have been looking to a fire chief as IC "for direction" during an active shooter or potential hostage situation shows how much is wrong with the way we all interpret the process.

Speaking specifically about the little sliver of the globe that I used to work in, law enforcement actually does a lot of ICS. Much more than EMS. EMS is still paralyzed with short term leaders and long term problems to quote another crusty old dinosaur from the business.