EMS or Emergency Medical Services is a system of wide-spread and synchronized integration or combination of resources and function who assist and rescue victims in case of emergencies. Its features and components include manpower, medicine direction, communications, professional training, community education, injury prevention information systems and evaluation, and rehabilitation. Emergency 911 responses are tasked to respond to medical and injury-related emergencies in a timely manner, regardless the cause of the emergency or the patient’s race, nationalities, or ability to pay.
Aside from these, their main duty is to minimize the physical, emotional and financial impact of the emergency to the individual involved. Shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, Emergency 911 was the first to be contacted by the residents within the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building, an office complex in downtown Oklahoma that was the exact site of the bombing. The first to respond to the bombing site are the police, ambulances and firefighters. The police was there first to secure the area and then look for the perpetrators of the crime.
They were the ones responsible for the immediate arrest of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for their roles in the bombing. EMSA ambulances and paramedics were the ones who assisted the victims since ambulance service is for pre-hospital response to 911 calls. Paramedics are ambulance personnel who have undergone special training in Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Life Support (ALS) in order to give first aid to emergency victims and attend to the needs of the patients.
In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, they immediately applied the necessary first aid treatment of the burns of the victims to avoid infection of the wounds of the victims as much as possible. The firefighters, aside of course of putting out the fire caused by the explosion, are also responsible for shoving and dredging the debris in order to rescue the victims trapped under the rubble.
Because of the combined rescue efforts of the EMS members, fifty people are already rescued from the Murrah Federal building on the first hour after the blast. By the end of the day, almost 241 victims were sent to different hospital for treatment. They also discovered another bomb which was detonated in time preventing another explosion.
Bibliography
The EMS agenda for the future. (1996). NHTSA/HRSA. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from the NHTSA/HRSA database.Emergency Medical Dispatch, EMD Program Implementation and Administration, Manager’s Guide. (1995). HRSA/NHTSA, EMD Curriculum, 94-PO69641/02T88. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from the NHTSA/HRSA database. Oklahoma City bombing. (1995). The New York Times. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from The New York Times database. Oklahoma City bombing. (1995). The Washington Post. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from The Washington Post database. Oklahoma City bombing. (2006). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 17, 2008, from http://en. wikipedia. org.