{"id":2456771,"date":"2020-04-05T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T03:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus\/"},"modified":"2020-04-05T21:36:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T03:36:00","slug":"hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hands on\u2019 is hands off for Pitkin County first-responders during coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"swift-gallery p402_hide\" readability=\"6.7307692307692\">\n<ul id=\"imageGallery-323875-467\" class=\"gallery list-unstyled gallery-container\">\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1024x692.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times | Aspen Ambulance District paramedic Lisa Hicks, left, and EMT Eric Tierney try on their powered air purifying respirator and Tyvek suit in the ambulance bay on Thursday, April 2, 2020. These particular PPE are used for transferring sick patients from Aspen Valley Hospital to a higher level of care facility, like Glenwood Springs or Denver. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)\" class=\"swift-gallery-slide h-100\" readability=\"2\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"15\">\n<p><strong>Aspen Ambulance District paramedic Lisa Hicks, left, and EMT Eric Tierney try on their powered air purifying respirator and Tyvek suit in the ambulance bay on Thursday, April 2, 2020. These particular PPE are used for transferring sick patients from Aspen Valley Hospital to a higher level of care facility, like Glenwood Springs or Denver. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)<\/strong><br \/>Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1024x692.jpg\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1024x692.jpg\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" alt=\"Aspen Ambulance District paramedic Lisa Hicks, left, and EMT Eric Tierney try on their powered air purifying respirator and Tyvek suit in the ambulance bay on Thursday, April 2, 2020. These particular PPE are used for transferring sick patients from Aspen Valley Hospital to a higher level of care facility, like Glenwood Springs or Denver. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1-1024x682.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times | Aspen Volunteer Fire Department captain Sandy Schiff runs truck checks outside of the fire house on Thursday, March 26, 2020. Schiff has been with the department for about six years. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)\" class=\"swift-gallery-slide h-100\" readability=\"0\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"11\">\n<p><strong>Aspen Volunteer Fire Department captain Sandy Schiff runs truck checks outside of the fire house on Thursday, March 26, 2020. Schiff has been with the department for about six years. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)<\/strong><br \/>Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1-1024x682.jpg\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/firstresponder-atd-040620-1-1-1024x682.jpg\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" alt=\"Aspen Volunteer Fire Department captain Sandy Schiff runs truck checks outside of the fire house on Thursday, March 26, 2020. Schiff has been with the department for about six years. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"caption-toggle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/local\/hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus\/#\" class=\"show-captions\">Show Captions<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/local\/hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus\/#\" class=\"hide-captions\">Hide Captions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The job of a police officer, firefighter or paramedic is, by definition, hands on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">But with \u201chands on\u201d off limits as the <a id=\"N0x2c013a0N0x2c1bd70:N0x2c013a0N0x2c27a78\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/coronavirus\/\">COVID-19 pandemic continues<\/a> to unfold across the United States, Colorado and Pitkin County, those emergency first responders are having to tweak the traditional ways they go about doing their jobs in favor of an arm\u2019s-length approach that feels foreign for local agencies more attuned to a touchier-feelier style of customer service.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWe pride ourselves on the fact that if you call us, we show up at your door,\u201d Pitkin County Undersheriff Ron Ryan said. \u201cThat has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Pitkin County deputies and Aspen police officers \u2014 who both tend to view their roles as predominantly community helpers rather than law enforcers \u2014 essentially are following the same coronavirus playbook. As many calls for assistance as possible are handled by phone or email, said Ryan and Aspen Assistant Police Chief Linda Consuegra.<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row at-donation at-donation-mobile p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/at-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to really minimize those contacts (with the public),\u201d Consuegra said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a big shift for our staff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Calls that require hands-on assistance, including those where public safety is at risk or an incident requires investigation, still are answered, though officers and deputies are being advised to limit contact as much as possible in those situations, they said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cIf someone needs any help and it\u2019s a life safety issue, we\u2019re going,\u201d Aspen Police Officer Ryan Turner said. \u201cIf we get sneezed on, \u2026 it\u2019s a risk we\u2019re willing to take.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Fortunately, Aspen and Pitkin County law enforcement agencies have seen a significant reduction in calls for service since <a id=\"N0x2c013a0N0x2c1bdd0:N0x2c013a0N0x2c27e68\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/pitkin-county-lengthens-stay-at-home-order-to-april-30-limits-group-down-to-5-people\/\">public health orders<\/a> closed ski mountains, bars and restaurants and most businesses, beginning in mid-March, and confining most residents to their homes. For example, Aspen police received 1,131 total calls for service in the last two weeks of March 2019 versus just 494 calls in the last two weeks of last month, according to APD statistics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWe\u2019ve had a quite a bit of a reduction in calls for service,\u201d Consuegra said. \u201cThat has helped. People are staying home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Turner, who was on duty one evening last week, confirmed that Aspen is indeed quiet. Officers would normally be responding to a steady stream of late-season issues involving ski thefts, DUI stops or policing the bar scene, but Wednesday was calmer than even most offseasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cIt\u2019s dead,\u201d Turner said. \u201cI did an entire patrol in the West End and I didn\u2019t see one other citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The calls the department has received have tended to fall into the welfare-check category, Consuegra said, and officers have not seen an uptick in domestic violence incidents that forced close-quarter situations might provoke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The main issue, Turner said, is one with which many residents can likely relate: isolation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cI\u2019m sitting in a remote area of the police department,\u201d he said, noting that police administrators have spread officers throughout the building and encouraged others who live in Aspen to respond from home. \u201cI like to call it my bat cave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">He said he\u2019d taken one complaint about a possible fraud in the previous hour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Police officers in Snowmass Village have split into teams of two, who regularly check in with each other but otherwise have no personal contact, even during a shift while working together, Chief Brian Olson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWe monitor each other\u2019s well-being on our days off,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are responsible for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Area firefighters also are taking precautions, including locking down fire stations to all but the most essential personnel, closely monitoring firefighters\u2019 health and establishing stringent guidelines for paramedics, fire and ambulance officials said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cMy main job is to keep this disease out of our fire stations at all costs,\u201d Aspen Fire Chief Rick Balentine said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Paramedics likely have the toughest time remaining hands-off, said Aspen Ambulance Director Gabe Muething.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cNo way can we perform our functions by ourselves,\u201d Muething said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Paramedics observe social distancing as much as possible when in the ambulance building, which is restricted to employees only. They also are checked at the door for COVID-19 symptoms and turned around immediately if any are detected, Muething said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Procedures have changed out in the field as well, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">First, paramedics are not nearly as quick to jump in with a physical diagnosis of a patient as they were a couple months ago. They will first conduct a verbal assessment at a safe distance before doing anything, Muething said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Any interaction with a patient will require gloves and a surgical mask at minimum. If paramedics believe an infectious disease might be present, they will wear gloves plus eye protection, a N95 mask and a gown over their clothes, Muething said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Another significant difference is the number of people involved in ambulance-related scenes, which in the past might have included two paramedics, a police officer or sheriff\u2019s deputy or two and maybe a firefighter, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cNow we evaluate what is the minimum number we need to accomplish the task,\u201d Muething said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sheriff\u2019s deputies still accompany ambulance calls, though they stage themselves down the road and will respond if needed, Undersheriff Ryan said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The main idea, emergency response officials agree, is to keep their employees as healthy as possible for as long as possible because they are not easily replaced in a county with less than 18,000 residents. That said, area public safety officials said while their staffs have weathered a few employees being out with virus symptoms over the past few weeks, none reported being hard-hit yet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">That situation more or less mirrors the general situation in Pitkin County, where two deaths have occurred so far, and one person was reported to be hospitalized at AVH with COVID-19 as of Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen the surge,\u201d said Scott Thompson, chief of the Snowmass Village and Basalt-based Roaring Fork Fire and Rescue. \u201cBut we\u2019re certainly expecting to see a surge. That\u2019s why we\u2019re trying to keep people out of the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The state as a whole, meanwhile, <a id=\"N0x2c013a0N0x2c1be30:N0x2c013a0N0x2c28c78\" href=\"https:\/\/covid19.colorado.gov\/case-data\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reported more than 4,900 COVID-19 cases<\/a><i class=\"fas fa-external-link-alt\"><\/i> through Saturday, with 924 hospitalized and 140 deaths. State data show Pitkin County with 38 reported cases since the onset <a id=\"N0x2c013a0N0x2c1be90:N0x2c013a0N0x2c28d08\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/55-year-old-man-second-reported-death-in-pitkin-county-related-to-covid-19\/\">with two deaths<\/a>, according to Sunday\u2019s update.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\"><a href=\"mailto:jauslander@aspentimes.com\">jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/local\/hands-on-is-hands-off-for-pitkin-county-first-responders-during-coronavirus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aspen Ambulance District paramedic Lisa Hicks, left, and EMT Eric Tierney try on their powered air purifying respirator and Tyvek suit in the ambulance bay on Thursday, April 2, 2020. These particular PPE are used for transferring sick patients from Aspen Valley Hospital to a higher level of care facility, like Glenwood Springs or Denver. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2456771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 06:08:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2456771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2456771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2456771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2456771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}