McCormick Ambulance defends response time in Hermosa Beach
McCormick Ambulance this week acknowledged that it should have notified the Hermosa Fire Department that its ambulance would be later than initially thought for a medical call on Sept. 7. The response time came to light when the patient’s stepfather, Norm Potter, complained at the Sept. 11 City Council meeting that a McCormick ambulance took 24 minutes to arrive. Potter’s stepson undergoes dialysis six times a week and has had three organ transplants. Hermosa Beach paramedics arrived at the patient’s home on 11th Street within five minutes, but the city did not have any available ambulance operators to transport the man to a local hospital. Although the fire department is staffed with full-time firefighter paramedics, the department also has part-time ambulance operators responsible for transporting non-life threatening emergencies, such as Potter’s stepson. As part of its mutual-aid agreement with neighboring cities, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach will call each other for available ambulance operators, who are also emergency medical technicians. On Sept. 7, however, neither Manhattan Beach nor Hermosa Beach had any available ambulance operators, so McCormick was called. Fire…
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