EMT Bikes

[thatismytruck]

My town had it's Fall Festival this past weekend. (yes I know it's not Fall yet) I noticed two of my friends riding bikes around. They are both Firefighters/EMTs. So I stopped and chatted with them for awhile.

This guy I've known since we were each 14. 31 years. We are still very close. We were co-captains of the swim team.

This guy is younger than me by about 5 years. I've known him only 20 years.

They carry around quite a bit of emergency supplies. The town sends out two EMT's on bikes for many large town events to have a first responder ... umm .... respond first and Fast! I knew my town had Police bikes, but not these. Kinda cool.

This whole four day fest takes place on the town green right in front of my house. Makes for a fun, very tiring, and sometimes aggravating weekend.

 

[hotfoot]

Having EMT's on bikes is a really cool idea, and makes sense in a crowd type situation.

 

[user 135]

Pretty cool. I have always thought an Xtracycle setup would be cool for EMT's at festival's, concerts, shows etc... They could pack custom boxes that would open so they could see everything. Xtracycle/Fossilfuel/rockthebike tried something called Lifebike, but I don't think much came of it.

http://rockthebike.com/node/1513

 

[Korporal]

Before I was laid off, I did bike details for large events. We had a similar set up to the pictured bikes. A few nights a year, the downtown would be blocked off to automobiles and 50,000+ people would gather for music/fireworks/etc in a town pop. 20,000. Road races were another good time. The 10 miler always seemed to happen on the hottest day of the year and runners would drop like flies. Rather than leave a runner until we could get an ambulance onto the course, a few EMTs would ride throughout the race finding people in need of assistance. Each bike would carry 2 large first aid kits, "in-bags," and a bottle of oxygen; or one in-bag, some bulkier specialized equipment, and oxygen.

I like the extra-cycle based design. It allows for lots of customization and large loads. The downsides are cost and having people interested in pedaling all that weight around for an event. I'm curious to see what Boston EMS had to say about them.