WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — The Memorial Day weekend kept first responders busy, especially those in Houston County. Houston Healthcare said they actually ran out of ambulances for a short period of time over the weekend.
Houston Healthcare's Director of Emergency Services David Borghelli said the weekend brought in car accidents, people struggling with the record heat, and special needs incidents.
Normally, the healthcare system is on top of calls and tries to plan ahead with more ambulances for days that are sure to keep the phone ringing.
"We look at historical records of when we'll have call fluctuations based on time of the day, day of the week, holidays," Borghelli said.
Sunday posed a problem. Houston Healthcare had eight ambulances on call and around 7 p.m. each ambulance was already at an emergency situation, but another call came in at 7:16 p.m. It was one more than the hospital system could handle.
They tried asking for help for help from surrounding agencies but Borghelli said other counties were facing similar battles.
"We did reach out to other services to request mutual aid," he said. "Unfortunately, they were in the same boat that we were."
Due to the influx in calls and no available ambulances at the time, law enforcement agencies had to bring people to the Houston Medical Center. Houston Healthcare eventually did make it to the ninth incident and brought patients to the hospital themselves.
Borghelli said he's confident that this was a singular incident and won't become a problem.
"For me, this was an outlier. We have a very stable and effective agency that provides emergency medical services for Houston County and to help out with the agencies around us," Borghelli said.
Houston Healthcare houses ambulances all around Houston County. They said their average response time to an emergency call is 14 minutes.