Fayette EMS Crew Helps Hurricane Recovery

A Fayette County EMS ambulance crew assisted with Hurricane Laura recovery efforts on the Texas Gulf Coast last week.

Fayette County EMS Director Josh Vandever said the crew left last Sunday, Aug. 23, and met at a staging area in San Antonio.

The next morning they traveled to Beaumont and joined an ambulance strike team. The team helped evacuate patients from nursing homes and assisted living centers in the area throughout Monday and Tuesday.

On Wednesday the crew went to Houston to ride out the storm as it made landfall. They deployed back to Beaumont after the storm passed to assist with the emergency response.

Vandever told the Record last Thursday that the team would be demobilized from there once local officials get the emergency under control.

The crew had not yet returned when the Record spoke with Vandever last week. Vandever said the Fayette County ambulance crew was working with personnel from agencies in San Antonio, Uvalde, Midland and other central and west Texas areas.

“Fayette County is part of the Texas Emergency Medical Taskforce,” Vandever said. “Anytime there’s a large scale disaster in the state that requires mass medical evacuation or a huge number of calls that the local jurisdiction cannot handle, they’ll stand-up items in the task force.”

Vandever said the taskforce typically requests resources from agencies in parts of the state unaffected by the disaster. Agencies like Fayette County EMS that have available resources will deploy teams to assist with the disaster. For this mission, Vandever said Fayette County sent a back-up ambulance and a crew of off-duty personnel who agreed to help. He said the state will reimburse the county for all costs, including pay for the medics who took up the mission.

“If we have an emergency, we can get our ambulance back immediately, and they’ll even find us resources until the ambulance gets back,” Vandever said.

Moreover, if Fayette County ever suffers a massive medical emergency, Vandever said he knows he can count on the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force for help.

“It’s Texans helping Texans,” Vandever said.