Massive Fires in California Force 180,000 Evacuations

Hospitals evacuate patients as fire approaches.

The ongoing series of wildfires in California continue to expand at a frightening pace. Driven by winds that often exceed 85 miles per hour, officials ordered evacuations in large areas of Sonoma County.

As originally reported in The Mercury News, officials at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital and the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa evacuated over 200 patients including eight babies from Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

In situations like these, officials often have to choose between attempting to shelter in place or transporting many patients in buses with only bench seating. due to a lack of available ambulances

Shelter in place poses the least risk to patients but if danger from the fire or prolonged outages make that tactic untenable, evacuations become the only option.

Many communities in the rural areas that are at most risk of woodland fires do not have access to multiple-patient transport vehicles (MPTV) and must shuttle a limited number of ambulances or worse, use school or metro buses that are not equipped to handle supine patients or wheelchairs.

To give emergency managers a cost-efficient solution to this problem. First Line Technology developed the AmbuBus Conversion Kit that can transform any available school or metro bus into a twelve to twenty-four patient transport vehicle in less than two hours with no power tools required.

The AmbuBus can be permanently installed for immediate response or temporarily installed when fire risk conditions suggest they may be needed.

The AmbuBus can be equipped with power, air conditioning, multi-patient monitoring systems and multi-patient oxygen to reduce the strain on patients’ health.

Read the original article here.