Kidder County (ND) Ambulance Service Hit Hard By COVID19 December 2020

Kidder County Ambulance Service, like their sister agencies in bigger departments, have been on the frontline in the fight against COVID19.

The Kidder County Ambulance Service takes care of a more rural part of the state, serving six communities — and they say it’s bad. It’s not just big city medical facilities facing capacity issues.

In an interview MonaThompson, EMS Director for Kidder County Ambulance, said, “Come fall time where we started to see this really big increase in calls, it’s kind of gotten a little bit overwhelming.”

During the last two weeks, they have seen an influx of calls and say it’s beginning to take a mental and physical toll on their staff.

“The one thing I did tell them, just a few days ago, if they become overwhelmed, they just need to let me know and I’ll take them off of the call shift. We’ll have someone else cover their shift because I’m beginning to see that,” said Thompson.

The ambulance service is also responding to more calls that aren’t COVID19 related.

“They’ll put off their medical condition or putting off getting help in a timely fashion. So some of these patients are much more sick than what I’ve seen in the past. And unfortunately, I’ve seen also an increase in the death rate amongst our community members. That is really taking its toll,” Thompson continued.

Staff has been running non-stop responding to calls and some calls can take up to four hours before they’re done.

“Usually we’ll, in most out cases, we will go to Bismarck to transport our patients. But they’ve been at max capacity on a couple of different occasions so we had to take patients to Fargo and Jamestown too,” said Thompson.

Thompson says she has also responded to plenty of COVID19 calls that are young adults suffering with serious symptoms.

COVID19 has become more dangerous for responders than 9-11 both medically and politically. Secondary to COVID19 budget shortages several municipalities are considering laying off the very front line responders helping with COVID19 now including FDNY EMS.

This was a preventable tragedy though. Per our Foundation Board Member, Christopher Suprun, COVID19 did not have to be this bad. He wrote an article in March for Rolling Stone detailing his concerns that this would stretch our surge capacity nationally and would be Katrina like.

Kidder County Ambulance Service

Kidder County EMS is a licensed Basic Life Support (BLS) Service with enhanced skills and Advanced Life Support capabilities. They serve the area around Steele, North Dakota.