Ambulance response times to some of Oxnard’s poorest neighborhoods prompted the launch of the Oxnard Fire Department’s first advanced life-support truck in November.
Squad 68, a two-person truck staffed by an accredited paramedic and an emergency medical technician, now operates as an advanced life-support unit out of Oxnard Fire Station No. 8 at 3000 S. Rose Ave. and responds to high-priority medical calls such as heart attacks or respiratory failure primarily in south Oxnard.
“We started to identify deficits when it came to certain responses,” Oxnard Fire Chief Darwin Base said last week.
Prior to the designation of the Oxnard Fire Department as an advanced life-support service provider, patients and responding firefighters in the city had to await the arrival of a paramedic from a private ambulance before extensive treatments, such as intubation, anaphylaxis medication and defibrillation could be administered.