Firefighter Union Wants Members Off Honolulu (HI) Ambulances Pending Investigation into Fire

An ambulance fire in the driveway at Adventist Health Castle in Kailua in Hawaii on Wednesday night killed a 91-year-old patient and critically injured a paramedic.

Now the International Association of Fire Fighters is putting the management on notice that it does not want firefighters riding in the ambulances until an investigation determines the cause of the fire, KHON reports.

Firefighters often accompany patients to the hospital in medical emergencies, but the union isn’t convinced there are adequate protocols in place to protect personnel in the case of emergencies.

In Wednesday’s fire, the patient was riding in the back of the ambulance with a paramedic, an eight-year veteran of Honolulu Emergency Medical Services, when the ambulance inexplicably caught fire. The paramedic suffered burn injuries. The paramedic’s medical technician partner, who was operating the vehicle at the time, was uninjured.

Hawaii IAFF President Bobby Lee told KHON: “We don’t want our members in the back of an ambulance, and we hope they will put great priority on doing a preliminary investigation to find out exactly how this fire started.”

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