Firefighters in Malverne, Lakeview and West Hempstead update safety protocols

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, first responders such as the Lakeview Fire Department are tasked with responding to emergencies while keeping themselves safe.

Over the past month, the department has limited the number of personnel responding to any given emergency call to reduce their chances of contracting the virus. Volunteers are now routinely equipped with personal protective equipment including N95 masks, gloves, medical gowns, eye shields and surgical bonnets.

“Our fire chief, James Galia, had instituted these policies to protect our volunteers,” Lakeview Fire Commissioner Heather McNeill explained. “With volunteers, we don’t want to put their lives completely on hold. We’d like to make sure that they’re taken care of.”

McNeill added that paperwork for each call has become even more important during the pandemic, and that the department logs every volunteer who reports to an emergency. Most calls are now limited to four people — the driver, an emergency services technician, an officer and an assistant.

“We evaluate everyone that calls us during an emergency, but we also have to protect ourselves,” McNeill said. “We’re not perfect. We try to do the best we can with what we have, and we’re [trying] to promote social distancing at the firehouse.”

The West Hempstead Fire Department has also limited the number of volunteers that go out on calls. And the department has limited the amount of volunteers at the firehouse to limit gatherings.

“We train and try to instill a certain set of guidelines and protocols in our members for years,” said Andrew Brohm, West Hempstead’s second assistant chief. “Everything’s difficult, but with this, we ended up learning a lot on the fly. We’re retraining our members in a way that can protect them.”

Brohm said that while the Fire Department has faced major emergencies in the past, nothing compares to the coronavirus outbreak. “This global pandemic presents a new challenge for us,” he explained. “We had the Ebola scare, but it was nothing on this kind of scale. I don’t think anybody on Long Island has dealt with anything on this kind of level, other than Hurricane Sandy or 9/11.”

West Hempstead firefighters and EMT units have equipped themselves with personal protective equipment to reduce the chances of contracting the virus. The Fire Department’s leadership, Brohm added, has kept its volunteers safe and prepared.

“Our leaders here have done a great job in breaking down the protocols over the past few weeks,” he said. “They’re really the ones who have been leading the charge in making sure that everyone here is safe and making sure we have the proper materials.”

County Executive Laura Curran held a news conference at the Malverne Fire Department last month, at which she detailed the types of emergency response vehicles used for large-scale outbreaks of infectious diseases. The vehicles Curran featured included hazmat and special operations trucks, a command bus and a major emergency response vehicle. Curran noted that Malvernite James Callahan, the commissioner of Nassau County’s Office of Emergency Management from 2006 until his death in 2011, was instrumental in putting the county’s plan in place for the use of emergency response vehicles.

“Our volunteer firefighters and ambulance service train for everything,” Curran said. “It’s really important that we protect our first responders so that they stay healthy and strong to help us.”