Catching Up With Kirkland Fire

Kirkland, Wash., had some of the earliest COVID-19 fatalities in the United States. The drama unfolded in late February 2020, when Kirkland Fire Department (KFD) EMS personnel went to the Life Care Center nursing home to deal with patients showing flulike breathing and fever symptoms. But it wasn’t the flu—it was COVID-19. By April the facility saw at least 35 deaths.

Not surprisingly, KFD personnel walked into the Life Care Center without the expanded PPE that would soon become standard. Their unwitting exposure to COVID-19 led to many KFD staff and family members being infected with the disease, and many more being quarantined. (Once the KFD knew it was COVID-19, the department moved to full PPE and took other measures to protect its staff.)

At the time EMS World covered the KFD’s early COVID-19 battle. Among those we interviewed was KFD EMS Capt. Joel Bodenman, who was literally on the frontlines of his city’s fight against the disease.

Now that more than half a year has elapsed since the KFD’s initial encounter with COVID-19, Bodenman looks back on how his department has fared and the lessons learned.

EMS World: It’s been many months since your EMTs and paramedics were first exposed to COVID-19 at the Life Care Center. How are you doing now?

Bodenman: Everybody’s doing well. We’ve still had more firefighters and police officers test positive since March, but overall nobody’s had any serious health repercussions as a result of COVID-19, and we’re still working through it.

This said, the biggest challenge right now for our fire department is community exposure. Most fire departments—us included—are getting really good at making sure their responders are safe on the job. The risk lies in our people getting exposed to COVID-19 while off duty and then bringing it to work. That is our biggest concern.

One side effect of COVID-19 has been an overall reduction in EMS calls due to the public being afraid to go to hospitals. Is this the case in Kirkland?

Yes, and this is not just happening in Kirkland. This is countywide—calls have decreased.

This being the case, we’re kind of creeping back toward our traditional call load in Kirkland. We are getting more cardiac chest pain calls, car accidents, and things like that. As well as the COVID-19 calls—the positives are going up, but the hospitalizations and fatalities are still fairly low.

As they’re increasing the testing, we’re seeing a lot more positive tests show up in the younger population. But the younger populations doesn’t seem to be needing emergency care like the elderly do.

What kinds of PPE and procedural protections are you using these days with respect to COVID-19 calls?

We’re still maintaining the same precautions we did at the beginning of the pandemic, once we found out what we were dealing with. We’re still making sure every firefighter who makes a patient contact has a mask, glasses, and gloves.

The pandemic lockdown has made it difficult for many EMS agencies to train and recertify their staff members. Has this been an issue for your department?

It’s certainly been a challenge. We’ve been set back six months in these processes.

As far as certification/recertification is concerned, the state has pretty much been flexible and provided continuances on a lot of things. So there hasn’t been any drastic repercussions in that regard. What is really affecting our staffing levels is exposure to the coronavirus. We still have people being quarantined on a weekly basis.

The hard thing with COVID-19 is that its symptoms mirror the flu and common cold. So it’s impossible to determine what a staff member is infected with prior to testing them. As a result, COVID-19 is still having quite an impact on our daily staffing levels. But it’s not as bad as it was in March, when we had 40 people go into isolation due to the Life Care Center exposures.

Your department has been fighting COVID-19 longer than most in the United States. How is morale holding up?

Morale is good. People are starting to understand the disease more and getting more comfortable with working in it.

The hardest challenge right now is to maintain vigilance and stay the course with respect to safety procedures. It’s hard to stay this hyperaware for such a long period of time. It’s just human nature for people to start to deviate as they become accustomed to a “new normal.”

Now people are talking about a second wave coming up, with fall approaching and kids going back to school. Is this something you’re planning for?

Well, whatever happens, we have a year’s worth of PPE in stock, based on our average case load during the peak of the pandemic’s first wave. So we’re doing well in regards to being prepared.

We also have quarantine and isolation facilities still set up, and they’re still utilized on occasion—not as much as they were in the beginning—for personnel if they need to social-distance or separate from their community so they can get healthy.

As far as the second wave, obviously nobody really knows for sure what’s going to happen. In our area schools are starting to open, and some are already being closed due to COVID-19 infections being detected.

Personally, I don’t know if the second wave will happen. But I would say we’re certainly ready for it.

Whatever happens, what has the Kirkland Fire Department learned from dealing with COVID-19?

Make sure to pay attention to the safety and health of your personnel, especially when something new like this happens.

From an administrative level, it is easy to look at the problem and start making policies and procedures. In your mind, you are helping your personnel and trying to solve the problem. But that’s not enough: You have to pay attention to the human side of things, because that’s the core of your organization. You have to consider how the problem is affecting your people personally and deal with it.

You also have to make sure your people are in the loop and know what’s going on. Most of the time they’re going to have solutions to your problems. After all, your EMTs and paramedics are out in the field doing the work. They know what equipment they need and what processes need to improved.

The biggest takeaway for any administrator in a situation like this is to listen to your people. They’re running the calls and they truly know what you need to do in most instances.

James Careless is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to EMS World.