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The department says they have had around 30 calls to assist an ambulance or firetruck stuck in the snow since Saturday night.
WASHINGTON — It’s not just you at home having trouble navigating the roads in these snowy, icy conditions.
DC Fire & EMS says it’s had several emergency vehicles get stuck on their way to calls since snow began to fall Saturday night.
DC Fire & EMS’ Apparatus Division in Southwest is where they have their own plows and tow trucks to get emergency vehicles unstuck or clear a path to get a patient to the hospital or a fire engine to a scene.
Some of the 70 employees working around the clock here construct and apply chains to the tires of an emergency vehicle.
“Sometimes during the snow when the main streets are plowed but the side streets aren’t, we tend to throw a lot of these chains,” said one of the workers. “They break off, so they send them back here and we repair them and get them all fixed up.”
“Don’t matter what the condition is, we make it work,” said Zackery Patton, a Mobile Equipment Leader with DC Fire EMS. “If the road condition is bad, the plow will come by so we can get in if the ambulance gets stuck. We’re able to pull them out so they can assist people.”
“They’ve been on about 30 calls in the last two days alone where the plow goes out and helps us get to a unit that’s stuck and then helps us get that unit away so they can get the scene opened up and get a person to the hospital or access to a building,” said Chief John Donnelly with DC Fire & EMS.
It’s been a long couple of days with more work on deck, but Patton says there’s no more rewarding work than this.
“For the city? Of course,” he said. “I mean, people need us, and we’re there. Do they need help? We’re there. That’s our job.”
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