Free complimentary copy September 11, 2015 • Volume 2, No. 46
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Crane Brewing, Kiwanis host craft beer festival
Photos by Kris Collins David Aslin, district manager for Root Sellers’, pours a ginger root beer at the Festival of the Lost Township this past weekend in Raytown. By Kris Collins If Labor Day weekend plans took you away from Raytown this year, frankly, you missed out on a good time in your own backyard. Approximately 500 people were at the green space in downtown Raytown Sept. 5 for the inaugural Festival of the Lost Township beer festival where attendees had a chance to sample craft beer and spirits from 30 breweries and distilleries from the Show-Me State and beyond. “I’m pretty pleased for it being a first-time event,” said Chris Meyers, Crane Brewing vice president and coowner. “I was mostly relieved and happy everyone else seemed really happy.”
Approximately 500 people filtered in and out of the Festival of the Lost Township beer festival Sept. 5 at the green space in Raytown.
Irish Fest and we don’t want it on Labor Day weekend.” Although operations at Crane Brewing aren’t up and running yet, the company did have Omega Saison, a beer made through collaboration with Torn Label Brewing Company out of Kansas City, on tap. The sample-size snifter of Omega Saison could have only been made better if Favorite Daze, a band out of Lee’s Summit, hadn’t taken a break from its set while I enjoyed my first taste of what’s to come from the creative minds at Crane Brewing. “Everything we’ve heard from people is that it’s great stuff,” Meyers said of the Omega Saison. “It’s available in a couple of restaurants and bars. I think
it was exciting for people to know we had that beer.” Those with VIP access at the event were able to, unexpectedly to the folks at Crane, try the Beet Weisse. Crane just secured its federal licensing to brew beer and the Beet Weisse was one of the beers metro area chefs used for food pairings in the VIP tent. Crane Brewing is expected to open next month. In addition to Missouri breweries like Kansas City Bier Company, Mother’s Brewery, of Springfield, and Root Sellers’, out of Columbia, some brewers came as far as New York and Michigan. Meyers said he hopes the event will be larger next year. “I would like bigger and more tents for next year,” he said. “I did like the
size of the festival. We’ve got a lot of space there to grow, but I’d like to grow it little by little each year.” Gustafson said the final tally on proceeds hasn’t been made yet. However, she said the proceeds will go toward supporting the children’s programs the Kiwanis provides — Pumpkins on Parade, Terrific Kids Program, Builders Club, Key Club, Circle K, a new club that started this year at the University of Missouri Kansas City. “We had a great time with the local Kiwanis Club, so I just assume partner with them again,” Meyers said. “They do great stuff within the community. I definitely want to do it again. I think we’re going set the date for next year as soon as we can.”
Photo by Brian Lee The Raytown Fire Protection District and the Kansas City Fire Department entered into an agreement in 2013 which allows each department to render service in the other’s service area in times of need. The service agreements, commonly called automatic aid, have been a point of discussion in the industry.
Firstly, typically in any given large American urban city, fire stations and fire trucks are already strategically distributed throughout the territory and outnumber the amount of ambulances. Therefore, dispatching fire trucks with medically trained personnel enables urgent medical care to be rendered prior to an ambulance’s arrival because they can arrive on scene sooner. Secondly, any given medical scene may require the need for “many hands on deck” to provide adequate care. For example, an elderly woman who calls 911 because she has “fallen and can’t get up” may be too weak to get up because of a cardiac or diabetic problem. Perhaps she is stuck between the toilet and bathtub and needs to have her front door broken in to allow access. This call would tax a usual two-person ambulance crew, and unless the fire truck had already been dispatched, the ambulance crew would be waiting outside the residence of a patient whose health may be deteriorating quickly until a fire truck arrived. RFPD fire trucks aren’t just ALS capable but exceed the gold standard, often staffed with multiple paramedics on board. Raytown EMS staffs paramedics on both of their ambulances as well. KCFD is starting to staff ALS fire trucks and hope to have all pumpers be ALS capable within the next few years; however the vast majority of trucks are still BLS only. Isn’t Raytown getting the short end of the stick if Kansas City BLS fire rigs are dispatched to respond to emergency calls in Raytown instead of Raytown’s ALS fire rigs? Not necessarily. Let’s consider what each department gains in this agglomeration of resources. Kansas City is a geographical oddity. Its vast 315-square-mile territory envelops whole municipalities, such as Raytown, North Kansas City, Gladstone, Avondale, Parkville, and others. It borders numerous suburban cities and townships. There are many nooks and crannies of its domain that increase arrival time. Timely medical treatment
is often imperative for patient survival. While ALS is the gold standard, BLS skills are always implemented first by ALS providers. Owing to this, a target on-scene time has been set by the KCFD for BLS units to arrive on scene within six minutes 85 percent of the time, and ALS units are to arrive on-scene within nine minutes 90 percent of the time. At present, it is not practical or financially feasible for Kansas City to build and staff enough fire stations so that every corner of Kansas City can have rigs on scene within six minutes. By having cooperative sharing of resources between fire departments, such as Raytown Fire Protection District and South Platte Fire District, municipalities can fill the gaps for each other and achieve quicker response times. Over a six month period between February and July of 2015, RFPD responded and mitigated an average of 71 calls a month in Kansas City — the nature of calls ranged anywhere from EMS and citizen assists to structure fires to motor vehicle accidents — with an average response time of six minutes 46 seconds. That is an average of more than two calls a day in Kansas City. By filling this void, it is reported that Raytown saved Kansas City millions of dollars by forgoing construction of another fire station, purchasing rigs for said station and paying for the salaries to operate it. That sounds great and all for Kansas City residents to get Raytown’s ALS fire rigs, but what does Raytown get out of the deal? At 10 square miles, Raytown’s coverage isn’t nearly as large as Kansas City’s. Haven’t RFPD and Raytown EMS always had stellar response times? Why would they need aid? To put things into perspective, during the same span of time, KCFD fire rigs responded to and mitigated an average of 106 calls a month in Raytown, with an average response time of four minutes 44 seconds. That’s more than 30 calls more a month than RFPD with a response time two minutes faster on average. One of those responding
Temperatures crept into the low 90s mid-day Saturday, but it was easy to beat the heat in the shade of tents and a cold beer in hand. If you missed the event, you can stop kicking yourself. Meyers said he very much would like to make the event an annual occurrence in Raytown. Brenda Gustafson, president of the Kiwanis Club of Raytown Three Trails, said her organization is also interested in co-hosting the event with Crane Brewing next year. She said the tentative date for next year’s Festival of the Lost Township is Sept. 10. “We know it won’t be Labor Day weekend,” she said. “We found that to be a little challenging … We know we don’t want it on the same weekend as
Automatic Aid: Raytown’s friend or foe?
Submitted by Brian Lee
It has been said that man’s fate is as certain as the weather. Yes, disaster can strike anytime. Accidents seem to befall us when we least expect it. Thus, nearly all of the developed and even developing countries of the world have taken measures to provide some form of prehospital system of emergency medical service (EMS) to render aid to those in need. Some services are primitive, “load n’ go” systems and others are as advanced as having mobile emergency rooms equipped with full onboard Computed Tomography (CT) scanners brought to one’s front door. It is important to understand there is no perfect system. All are seemingly in a constant state of flux as officials try to improve quality of service and level of care with a limited budget. In 2013, the Raytown Fire Protection District (RFPD), took such steps to improve service by implementing an agreement with the Kansas City Fire Department (KCFD) to coalesce resources, termed Automatic Aid, also called Auto-aid for short, wherein the RFPD emergency response region, which is Raytown proper, is treated as part of an integrated whole of the KCFD emergency response territory, which is all of Kansas City. In other words, KCFD assumes the role of dispatching RFPD fire trucks to respond to emergency calls within and outside of Raytown as the need arises, and KCFD units vice versa, with neither department requiring fees from each other for its services. This naturally begs the question from Raytown’s John Q. Public: “After all these years of being successfully independent, why would RFPD decide to merge territories with a fire department that has a different tax base? Doesn’t Raytown provide a higher level of care to its residents than Kansas City can? If something happens to me or my loved ones and RFPD trucks are off on another call in Kansas City, how will the high level of EMS and fire and
rescue services that my tax dollars pay for be rendered in a timely fashion? Are my tax dollars getting the best bang for their buck or is Auto-aid depriving us of warranted services?” To truly do this weighty topic justice, we first need to appreciate how Raytown’s system measures up to other comparable EMS systems, and the pros and cons of such a merger between departments before we can accurately and fairly pass judgment on Auto-aid. In the vast majority of the U.S., there are two main levels of treatment in pre-hospital EMS systems: basic life support (BLS) and advanced life support (ALS). BLS is medical treatment rendered by emergency medical technicians (EMT) whose training consists of CPR, cardiac defibrillation, splinting, basic airway management and ventila-
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tion, emergency rescue techniques, and other non-invasive medical treatment. ALS is medical treatment rendered by EMT-Paramedics who are qualified to perform both the skills of the EMT as well as more invasive life-saving medical treatments (i.e. intubation, cardioversion, et cetera), start IVs, give medicine, interpret electrocardiograms, and more. In most urban environments, responding personnel are all ALS, that is to say they have one or more paramedics on board. Fire rigs, which historically have only been BLS but which are being staffed more often with ALS personnel, are also dispatched to every medical scene regardless of the severity. This often raises the eyebrows of residents who may wonder “why the overkill?” There are two main reasons for this.
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EMS continued on page 3
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