By Michael P. Buffer
The Citizens’ Voice
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — The city fire department and Wilkes-Barre Area School District are planning to improve ambulance services for upcoming football games at Wilkes-Barre Memorial Stadium by Meyers High School, officials said Tuesday.
The fire department and school district are also close to resolving a dispute over whether city ambulance personnel need legal clearances to work at high school football games, Superintendent Brian Costello and Fire Chief Jay Delaney said Tuesday.
For Friday’s game between GAR High School and Pittston Area, the district hired a private ambulance company, and the ambulance was not on the field because the city on Thursday closed the Carey Avenue tunnel that leads to the stadium and an interior parking lot at Meyers.
Prior to the action condemning the tunnel as unsafe, an ambulance was parked on the field during games at the stadium.
The action was the result of a building-deterioration inspection, and the tunnel is the only way a vehicle can get to the field.
During Friday’s game, a GAR player broke his leg, and the game was delayed 10 minutes while officials waited for ambulance personnel to arrive on the field with a stretcher. Then the game was delayed another 10 minutes as the player was carried from the field and up steps to an ambulance on Old River Road.
The private ambulance was parked on Old River Road, but city ambulance personnel responded to a 911 call and took the injured player to the hospital in a city ambulance, Costello said.
For upcoming games, the city will park an ambulance on Old River Road by the steps to the field, but a paramedic and firefighter/emergency medical technician will be on the sidelines with immobilization equipment and a stretcher on wheels, Delaney said. The stretcher and other equipment was kept in the ambulance when the ambulance was on the field, Delaney said.
If there’s an emergency during a game, the city will deploy three additional employees to help carry a player on a stretcher up the steps, Delaney said.
City ambulance personnel are experienced at dealing with steps and stairs because they often respond to older, urban buildings, and city ambulances are superior vehicles, Delaney said, referring to a city ambulance as “an emergency room on wheels.”
Delaney and Costello said they had a productive meeting on Tuesday, but they didn’t say exactly how the dispute about clearances will be resolved. The district had been paying the city for ambulance services but insists a new law requires an ambulance technician to have up-to-date clearances to work on school property when the district is paying for ambulance services.
Delaney has said fire and emergency medical personnel are exempt from the new law. The clearances are the result of criminal and child-abuse background checks, and Costello said it costs $43 per person to get legal clearances.
The school district may consider tearing down the tunnel to allow an ambulance to get to the field, Costello said.
The cost of that task is unknown and would be determined by receiving bids, said Gary Salijko, a district facility consultant with Apollo Group Inc. The school board would have to authorize a bid opening for that project, Costello said.
Above the tunnel is a walkway that leads to the Meyers cafeteria, but walking on it is now prohibited because of deterioration along the structure. The district is now planning to build an emergency stairway from the cafeteria exit to the playing field and also reinforce a few steel beams that support the walkway by the Meyers gym, Salijko said.
Reinforcing the steel beams and building the new stairway will cost around $24,000, Salijko said.
The district could move ahead with that emergency work by getting price quotes for the work, instead of advertising a bid opening, according to Salijko.
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