Jumpline magazine OCT 2022-pages - Flipbook - Page 38
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Did you ever wonder...
Did you ever wonder how Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department came to have the programs
and resources for assistance in
so many specialty areas? Our
Dive Rescue Program started after the death of firefighter
Shawn O’Dare, an MDFR volunteer on-duty diver on February
16, 1985. He died while trying to
save a young girl from a canal in
Northwest Miami-Dade. Up until
that point we had no dive equipment on any of our units.
Our Venom Response Program started after the closing of the Miami Serpentarium that
produced high quality antivenin and was the sole supplier of
venom for antivenin production in the U.S. for over 40 years.
Lt. Al Cruz decided to do something about it, but he will have
to tell you the rest of that story.
The same goes for our Hazmat, Technical Rescue, Urban
Search and Rescue, Ocean Rescue, Air Rescue, Marine Services Bureau, etc. I hope that others will follow this article with
more details on how each of those programs got their start.
In case you ever wondered how Protocol 29, focusing on
abuse and neglect reporting and the Elder-Links/Community Services Program came to be, I would be the firefighter
to tell you that story. I worked in areas of the county where
multi-generational families took care of one another. There
were areas in the county where elderly parents and grandparents lived completely on their own and had 9-1-1 as their
only resource for assistance. That became my focus and often times when getting off duty in the morning, I would find
myself driving back to where we had responded in the middle
of the night to, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up,” and revisiting
apartments or homes, to see if I could be of assistance. Obviously, this was not the solution, but it gave me the drive to
find a solution.
To my advantage, in the north end of the county I worked
for many years at Parkway General Hospital (now Jackson
North) and knew many of the doctors in the area. So, one
morning in 1993 I went back to the previous night’s call, and
I was greeted by Stella Kaplan, a 94-year-old living on her
own. She remembered me and invited me in. Stella had no
knowledge of where any of her relatives lived. I called her
primary doctor who I knew from having worked at the hospital
in the area. He too advised she had no known living relatives.
So, I asked myself, what did Stella need? Meals on Wheels,
a senior center to go to during the day, an aide to provide
assistance? How was Stella supposed to navigate a social
services system which I did not even know existed?
I started my quest for answers. I, like most, thought
1-800-ABUSE would have the answers, but NO! They are
only there for certain criteria which Stella did not meet.
Through research, I found the Area Agency on Aging (AAA),
which provides services to those over the age of sixty. This local group is one of 670+ agencies nationwide established by
Christie Treiber Donn, Ret.
the Older Americans Act. We did not need to create a social
services network. It was already there, and we just needed to
find a way to utilize those services for the mutual benefit of
our department and the community we serve.
I set up a meeting with Fire Chief R.D. Paulison, with a
proposal to create what is now known as Elder-Links. The
only issue was funding, to which Chief Paulison said if I could
find it, I had his approval. I met with the director of our AAA at
the time, John Stokesberry, and made the same proposal to
him. How do we connect our 9-1-1 callers who do not need
a hospital ER visit with services they do need, after we have
responded and identified those needs? Working closely with
our County Commission, United Way of Dade County, and
the Area Agency on Aging in 1994, we were able to secure
a $60,000 grant from the Department of Elder Affairs and Elder-Links was born!
The details of how the program was set up were quite interesting as we had pagers, not cell phones. I was on call via
pager to take information and transcribe into written form. Our
stations did not have computers or fax machines. I think this
may come as a surprise to most of you currently on the job,
but hey, we have come a long way since 1994 when some of
you were not even born yet! I was eventually able to secure
an additional grant for fax machines which are now becoming
ancient history.
Because of Elder-Links, I was asked to serve on Governor
Lawton Chiles’ Task Force for Elder Abuse in Tallahassee. I
was instrumental, along with one of our county commissioners, in getting Spanish and Creole speaking operators at the
1-800-ABUSE Hotline in Tallahassee. I attended monthly
staff meetings with our local Department of Children & Family
Services to better assist in coordinating the needs of those
we referred to them. The department and union also assigned
me to help with Miami-Dade United Way Campaign in 1995,
which opened my eyes to other services we could refer to,
that United Way helped fund. I also spoke at the IAFF EMS
Conference in Atlantic City. At the time, I was already meeting
with many fire departments across the state. What makes Elder-Links unique is the main agency providing these services,
AAA, remains the same from state to state.
I want to thank all those who collaborated with me throughout the years as well as everyone that has kept Elder-Links
existing and expanding as I had hoped it would. I went back
to the field in 2002
and got one of the
very first Haz-Mat
bids at MIA Station
59.
To sum up why I
wanted to write this
article: to encourage
each and every one
of you to realize your
dreams! If you see
a need, do not complain about it. Do
something to fix it!
October 2022 | JUMPLINE Magazine
