Inclusivity in an emergency — Emergency responders, disabled community work together

BUFFALO — The best way to improve how emergency responders address the needs of people with disabilities is through communication, said Florencia Gullick, Johnson County’s dispatch supervisor.

On Dec. 12 at the Buffalo Senior Center, Johnson County’s emergency responders and many community members with disabilities did exactly that. Roughly 50 people gathered at the senior center for the two-way conversation – specifically targeted at community members who are hard of hearing, have low-vision or are non-ambulatory.

Representatives from Johnson County Emergency Management, the Buffalo Police Department, Buffalo EMS, the dispatch center, the Sheriff’s Office and the Buffalo Volunteer Fire Department also attended.

Erika McCarter, public safety administrator with the police department, said that emergency response isn’t a solitary job.

“Every call is a team effort. Every call, everyone is involved. We do have a lot of plans in place, but that team includes the caller,” McCarter said.

A desire to improve that team effort inspired the community panel. The center’s activities director, Sandy Aker, said the idea for the panel came out of questions brought up by the center’s hearing impairment group.

“They meet once a month, and one of the things they wanted to talk about was, just, kind of the safety angle of what happens in an emergency. How do our community response teams – how are they trained? And how do you know what to do if you’re hard of hearing or lost all your hearing?” Aker said.

Then, ambulatory and visually impaired groups at the center asked to expand the panel’s focus to include them, Aker said.

One of the clear messages at the meeting is that dispatchers are at the heart of all emergency service work. Gullick said during the discussion that dispatch keeps a file with relevant information on every household they interact with to help emergency responders.

“Once we learn that someone has a disability, or anything special about that household, what we do is we build what’s called a people file, and it has got your information, your name, your phone number, your address, if you happen to have a door code – sometimes people have a door code or they have a hidden key,” Gullick said. “We never put that information out on the … radio, but we will have that information on your profile so that we can pass that on just in case that person wasn’t able to let us know.”

While dispatch will create a people file during an emergency, people can create that profile proactively by calling the Buffalo Police Department’s non-emergency line at 684-5581 before an emergency happens.

Buffalo EMS Director Dave Harness said that people can also arrange to meet with EMS employees ahead of emergencies to explain their disabilities and get to know the EMTs.

“When we as first responders better understand the disabilities of our community, everyone is safer. We need, as first responders, to get out into the community and be introduced by caregivers that disabled people trust, and be introduced to them in advance of a high-stress situation that could occur,” Harness said. “If you’re having a high-stress situation and some stranger comes into your house, that just adds to the stress.”

Emergency responders in the community already have some procedures in place to handle emergencies involving people with various disabilities. Jimmy Cataline, Johnson County Emergency Management coordinator, said that the county’s emergency management plan includes procedures for people with disabilities.

For example, the county uses the ready-set- go program for evacuations and has different procedures for people who have mobility issues.

At each stage of the program, people within an evacuation zone have different steps they are supposed to take. For people with disabilities or who need assistance to evacuate, they should be doing the “go” procedures during the “set” phase, Cataline said.

“Evacuations are not typically recommended until we hit the go phase, but when we’re dealing with groups that have mobility issues, that have access and functional needs or specific disabilities that might hinder their expedient evacuation, generally during the set phase is when we tell that group, ‘You should start to evacuate.’”

CodeRED alerts are the main way that emergency services communicate with people in the event of an emergency and are delivered as both phone calls and text messages. Residents can enroll in the program by using the link on the city’s website on the CodeRED page. People can also call the emergency management office at 684-2761 to supply their information over the phone.

At Buffalo EMS, EMTs have a lot of training related to various disabilities.

For visual impairments, Harness said that EMTs are taught to use verbal cues and guide people through physical touch. For people with hearing loss, EMTs are prepared to write things down to communicate. For non-ambulatory patients, EMTs are expected to ask the patient how they can best assist them and how they want to be moved. For people with cognitive impairment, EMTs speak slowly and use simple sentences.

“We have comprehensive training to understand different disabilities, and we do role-playing in scenarios,” Harness said. “Overall, I think the main thing that you’ll find from our people … it’d be compassion, understanding.”

One of the ideas suggested in the meeting is that emergency responders could include more people with disabilities in training sessions to participate and oversee them. One of the biggest takeaways from the panel discussion is that disabilities can look different for everyone, and the best expert on a person’s disability is often the person themself.

“We know our disabilities the best,” Sexton said during the discussion.

One of the panel speakers, Sam Humphrey, spoke about his disability at the gathering.

He is paralyzed from the waist down, which means that unless he has something to hold onto with his arms or is strapped into something, he cannot keep himself upright, he said.

While traveling, he and his wife, Cindy, tried to make that clear to a group of airline attendants as he was boarding a plane.

Humphrey explained that, to board the plane, he is taken to his seat in an aisle chair, which is a skinny seat with no armrests and a strap.

“My wife told them, you can’t let go of him once you unstrap him. Of course, they didn’t pay any attention. They unstrap me, I fell over. And, you know, all I did was fall off the aisle,” he said “… Paramedics came and checked me, and they didn’t look for anything. I can’t feel anything, so I didn’t know. We come to realize, about a couple months ago, I had a CAT scan and my femur, it broke, … and it was broken from that accident.”

Cindy Humphrey said that is why it is important to listen to people with disabilities and their caregivers. She said the paramedics were informed that her husband was paralyzed from the waist down, and in situations like that, Harness said, paramedics are supposed to assume everything is broken because the patient can’t say if they are in pain anywhere in their legs or hips.

“I feel like there is a big disconnect between what you’re told about disability to what’s actually having a hands-on training where you maybe, actually transfer somebody in real time,” Cindy Humphrey said.

She asked if Buffalo EMS does hands-on training with people who have disabilities and if they would consider it if her husband, for example, were to volunteer.

“This is a great example of, ‘You learn something every day,’ and the answer to your question is, ‘We don’t,’” Harness said. “But the next answer is, ‘We will,’ and I think that it’s a tremendous idea.”

Those training sessions are among the changes to emergency response operations that some of the panel members said they plan to implement. Sexton said that once those changes come to fruition, the center hopes to host a follow-up discussion.

This story was published on December 26, 2024.