FFs Stay Healthy Despite CO City's Many COVID-19 Cases

Editor's note: Find Firehouse.com's complete coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here.

Greeley’s unfortunate status as the center of one of the state’s larger COVID-19 outbreaks has led to a high volume of pandemic-related work for the city’s first responders. However, in spite of the potential for exposure, Greeley Fire Department, Police Department and Emergency Medical Services personnel have managed to largely avoid significant spread of the virus within their ranks.

That’s very likely because of aggressive, intentional policy on the part of the first responders themselves, as well as their partners at dispatch, the Weld County Regional Communications Center.

“It seems obvious maybe in some regard, but many may not be aware,” division chief over operations for the Greeley Fire Department Brian Kuznik said, “We have a certain minimum number of staff on duty every day. We work rotation shifts, and if our firefighters or EMS were to become infected with COVID, and it spread amongst the fire station, it’d potentially shout down an entire station for 14 days. That would ultimately affect our ability to respond to fire, EMS or rescue incidents in an acceptable amount of time that the community deserves.”

Data reported by Greeley Office of Emergency Management manager Dan Frazen to Greeley City Council on Friday afternoon included a chart depicting the number of first responders currently in quarantine in Greeley. While the number recently ticked up to five Thursday, it was as low as one late this past week and has been single digits since April 21. Even before that date, the number of quarantined first responders was still sitting below a threshold of 5% of Greeley’s combined fire and police workforce.

Frazen credits dispatch, as well as Kuznik, in part, for that — though Kuznik is quick to diffuse the credit among other stakeholders.

“There were groups behind the scenes making changes, and though I did consult with them, I don’t deserve credit,” Kuznik said emphatically. “I will say, Weld County implementing these tools early on, it gave us as first responders the opportunity to respond appropriately.”

These tools were headlined by something seemingly simple, but one that required a relatively early move to work as effectively as it has.

“The tool we’re operating under is through the dispatch center,” Kuznik said. “There’s an international guideline related to infectious disease surveillance called the Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance tool. Really it’s a screening process happening on the front end of a 9-1-1 call providing guidance to ask specific questions relating to infectious disease.”

Early on, Kuznik explained, dispatch began asking an emergency caller a few tailored questions to maximize the information that could be delivered to first responders who would head out to the site of the call. In the early days, that included questions about travel to global hotspots like China, as well as fever or cough. The questions have evolved over time.

“We were able to adapt and adjust our response and the level of protective equipment we wore based off their screening tool,” Kuznik said. “What we did to supplement their tool and in coordination with the dispatch center was any time a call was generated, the responsible party or the person calling 9-1-1, the patient, their contact number would go into call notes, and our responders would call the ‘RP,’ or patient, via cell phone and ask a similar set of questions to double-up on our efforts to get the correct answer.

“We responded very aggressively, and I think that speaks to why our responder numbers were low in terms of COVID.”

That means the overarching goal for the departments — to continue to serve the community on the same level and at the same capacity as before the pandemic — is reachable.

“We had five very solid organizational priorities,” Kuznik said. “Two in particular that I’ll speak to are: One, to establish health, wellness and safety measures to minimize the chance of exposure to our personnel. That’s why we took such an aggressive stance, that was our number-one priority. And two, if we didn’t care for our people, we knew patient outcome and fire response would be impacted. We didn’t want to have a reduction in service level.”

The other three priorities are also interrelated.

The departments committed to obtain and maintain a 90-day supply of personal protective equipment, knowing, Kuznik said, this was going to be a long haul.

“We aggressively pursued the appropriate level of PPE before the supply chain got disrupted,” he said.

There was also a commitment to communication with personnel, knowing “in a time of uncertainty, people want answers,” Kuznik said. And finally, the departments committed to slow the spread of COVID-19 through preventative measures.

“We felt, public image-wise, if we weren’t taking precautions but asked the community to do so, that wouldn’t be good,” Kuznik said.

Constant re-evaluation of the approach began as early as the end of February, Kuznik said. Moving through 24-hour plans, 48-hour plans and, as recently as this past week, with factors starting to stabilize somewhat, 6-day plans, the departments have been intentional about their procedures to meet these five goals.

It’s worked.

“The information I’m getting from fire departments around the state is we handle significantly more COVID calls than our neighbors and our comparable (districts),” said Frazen, the emergency manager. “So to see the numbers we have while handling more COVID calls, that’s excellent.

“This is something we’ve done right here.”

———

©2020 the Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colo.)

Visit the Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colo.) at www.greeleytribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.