Fayette EMS Director Aids Hurricane Victims in Houston

Fayette County EMS DIrector Josh Vandever was in Houston last week assisting with the response to Hurricane Beryl.

Vandever serves on the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force, a team of medical professionals called upon to assist during disasters. He reported to a Texas Division of Emergency Management staging area in San Antonio on Friday, June 5, two days before the storm made landfall. At that time, forecasters believed the storm was going to hit South Texas.

“Saturday morning, I was assigned a partner and we headed to the DPS Headquarters in Weslaco and assisted the Disaster District Emergency Operations Center’s Incident Support Team with the identification, planning and execution of any needed rescues/evacuations,” he said.

There, they began evacuating vulnerable people in Refugio and Aransas Counties. When it became clear that those counties were no longer in danger, Vandever assisted in the planning to get those people taken back to their homes. “As soon as that operation kicked off, my partner and I split and I drove to Houston,” he said. “My primary responsibility has been getting oxygen tanks sent all over Houston to homes of oxygen dependent people who are without electricity.”

At its peak, the storm knocked out electricity to 2.2 million people in Houston. More than a half million people remained without power as of last Friday.

By Tuesday evening last week, Vandever said he had delivered oxygen to about 60 patients over the course of 24 hours. He also transported some of those patients to emergency shelters.

On Wednesday, Vandever and a team of four others started checking on wait times at hospitals in Houston.

“With the power being out and all of the expanded volume, it’s becoming a problem for hospitals and EMS services,” he said. “The hospitals can’t send people home who are fragile, because they don’t have power, air conditioning and the ability to plug in oxygen. The EMS services are getting more and more calls, but there is no place for those people in the hospitals.”

Vandever said ambulances were waiting four or five hours to unload patients at hospitals because there are no beds available.

“My team is going into hospitals to watch those people until the nurses can find a bed for them,” he said. “That’s pretty much been a 24/7 mission.”

Sam Brychta, an EMT with Fayette County EMS, also deployed to Houston with the task force. Vandever said Brychta has been working at a command center at NRG Park.

“There’s hundreds of resources in the parking lot,” Vandever said. “Sam is on the team staging the resources. They’ve got mess halls, fuel stations for gas and diesel, all of the Centerpoint electric trucks are set up in another parking lot. It’s quite something to see.”

Vandever said he was hoping to come home on Sunday, July 14.

He said the task force will likely remain in Houston through the end of this week.

Vandever and Brychta’s deployments come at no cost to Fayette County. The State of Texas reimburses the County for their salaries and expenses while deployed. On top of that, Vandever said, the State pays the County an additional fee for each day they are deployed.

“It’s a great team to be a part of and it’s good that we also have access to it,” Vandever said. “If we ever need it, within a couple of hours, we’d have people from all over the state in La Grange.”