Memphis Fire Department Rolls Out Super-Sized Ambulance

March 20--Providing another sign of ever-expanding waistlines, the Memphis Fire Department has added an ambulance that can transport super-sized patients.

Capable of comfortably carrying people weighing up to 1,600 pounds, the "bariatric ambulance" equipped with a winch and extra-large stretcher, is now waiting at centrally located Fire Station 13 on East Parkway to fetch its first patient.

"We're seeing more and more obese patients," said Deputy Fire Chief Gary Ludwig, who oversees emergency management services for the department. "That's part of the issue."

About once a week, the department will need to transport patients in the 600- to 800-pound range, Ludwig estimated.

The department has seen some sick or injured people tipping the scales at more than 1,000 pounds, he said.

Ludwig recalled one instance in which firefighters had to remove the wall of a house to get a very large patient to an ambulance.

Without stretchers large enough, very obese patients had to be lifted in "man sacks," Ludwig said.

Stretchers had to be removed from ambulances and the patients had to ride on the floor, he said. Extra fire companies had to be called in for their muscle power.

The Memphis Fire Department is following a local trend. The Bartlett Fire Department retrofitted an ambulance for obese patients last year and a private company, Rural/Metro, serving other suburban communities in Shelby County began phasing in wider stretchers years before.

The Memphis department made the decision a little over a year ago to get one of the department's ambulances into shape for the task. The International light-duty trucks Memphis uses already are the largest ambulances available, Ludwig said.

Fortifying the vehicle was done in-house, by fire department mechanics, including installation of a winch that pulls the stretcher up ramps into the ambulance. A stretcher company retrofitted the inside. The total budget for the project was under $5,000, Ludwig said.

The super-sized ambulance, as well as the four-person fire engine crew that accompanies it, will be considered on calls where medically stable patients weighing about 500 pounds or more could use the specially-equipped ride to a hospital.

"It's going to save our firefighters' backs," Ludwig said. "It's going to provide some dignity (to patients), so we're not laying them on the floor of the ambulance."

Copyright 2012 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.