Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Emergency Response topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Director reports longer EMS responses to Lakewood Park, cites poor roads and gated access
Summary
The authority's director told members that some calls to Lakewood Park had response times exceeding 20 minutes, attributing delays to gated access and poor road conditions that slow ambulances.
At the Feb. 19 meeting, the director reported that a subset of emergency medical calls had response times longer than 20 minutes, with most of those calls concentrated in Lakewood Park on the county fringe.
"That tells the calls that have longer than 20 minute response times," the director said, adding that "almost all of them were out in Lakewood Park," and that the area is on the county line and often requires dispatch from New Union.
Explaining the cause, the director described the local roads as poor: "it is just pothole after pothole. We literally do about 2 miles an hour to keep from destroying the vehicles," he said, and noted gated access and rough surfaces add roughly five minutes to response times from the time crews reach the gate.
Members clarified jurisdictional boundaries during the exchange: the chair noted most residential addresses are in Coffee County while part of the property lies in Cannon County, and stated the roads in Lakewood are private with public access so the county does not maintain them. The director and the chair agreed this combination of private roads, poor surface conditions and dispatching patterns contributes to the longer response times.
No formal action was taken; the issue was discussed as part of the director's operational report and will inform operational planning and the forthcoming budget review.
