High demand slows Hazmat suit supply for EMS crews
VANCE COUNTY (WTVD) -- In Vance County, EMS crews have been waiting on a shipment of full body Hazmat suits for almost two weeks.
"They call this 'fully encapsulated,'" said Capt. Javier Plummer as he pulled on one of five full body suits already in-house.
As Battalion Chief Mark Minish explained, "They're going to keep all bodily fluids and everything from getting on top of you."
Problem is, Minish and his crew haven't been able to get the new suits because of high demand. One of the companies that makes the suits, Dupont, tells ABC11 that they've been getting slammed with orders which has slowed them down.
What's more, many first responders in North Carolina have not been trained on the new protocol, or even trained about how to use the equipment required. Minish says he expects his team to be trained through the state by mid-November.
"Tomorrow would be wonderful," said Minish. "But on something on a scale as large as this, this is about as fast as you can move probably. You've got to have a game plan. You've got to be prepared so that you don't spend all this unnecessary money and then train people the wrong way and have to retrain them."
Minish says in Vance County, they've been getting updates from the state "almost on a daily basis."
But they're not getting is those safety suits.
"Hopefully, this Ebola thing will go away and won't get bigger and bigger," Minish said. "But if it does get bigger, right now we've got five suits. So if we start having a case a day, we've got a week of these suits."
