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Pueblo: Home of (Many) Heroes

An AMR ambulance carrying a patient leaves the scene of an emergency, en route to Parkview Medical Center.


It's the situations that scare us most--injury, fire, and death--that paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) flock to. They ignore their basic human instincts to avoid danger and instead, they challenge it. In Pueblo, emergency services are carried out by the Pueblo Fire Department and AMR, a contracted ambulance company, over a jurisdiction of 46.79 square miles. There are currently 134 registered EMTs in Pueblo, and 21 of them are also certified paramedics. They answer around 15,000 calls a year, with the majority consisting of medical emergency summons. 
One such medical emergency occurred on Friday, July 14 at approximately 11:45 a.m. An unidentified elderly woman lost consciousness at Intellitec College and was treated onsite by a team of three paramedics and two EMTs before being rushed to Parkview Medical Center for treatment. The response time was six minutes and nine seconds, and the medical technicians were on scene for approximately 20 minutes preparing the patient for transport. 


                                                  Engine 7, the paramedics of which possess an Advanced EMT certificate, responded to this particular call. Advanced EMT certification involves another semester of training and several hundred more hours of clinicals. One of the technicians that responded, Justin Freeman, happened to be doing clinical hours for his advanced course. "It's crazy. It's one of the most heart-pounding things that you can do for a class," he breathlessly articulated before typing some information onto the computer. "They've still got me on data entry, though," he laughed.




A job well done: with supplies in hand, a paramedic prepares to
pack up and leave the scene after stabilizing the patient. 

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