By CHELCEY ADAMI
Imperial Valley Press Staff Writer
12:25 a.m. PDT, July 22, 2012


Calexico firefighters Channing Dawson and Joel Rivera leave the Calexico Downtown Port of Entry after responding to a recent medical call there. The department receives between eight and 10 calls a day to the Calexico Downtown Port of Entry. (CHELCEY ADAMI PHOTO / July 21, 2012)

CALEXICO — On any given day, the Calexico Fire Department may respond to a border-crosser with a headache at the Port of Entry, a rash of pregnant undocumented immigrants along Bowker Road or an undocumented immigrant who broke his leg crossing the fence.

The department often responds to eight to 10 calls a day at the Calexico downtown Port of Entry alone.

Between requests for assistance from the Border Patrol and to the port, around 25 and 30 percent of the department’s calls are to assist federal agencies.

These calls can be hard to collect on, and the city’s fire department ends up shouldering some of that financial burden when those funds could go toward serving Calexico residents. It also ties up the Fire Department’s only ambulance when it may be needed elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of flaws within the system,” Calexico Fire Chief Pete Mercado said. “There’s a lot of people who use EMS resources as a crutch when they don’t have transportation or they just want an evaluation because they (insurance) will cover emergency response but not an office visit.”

The Fire Department, the only one in the Valley with its own ambulance service, legally must respond to all medical calls.

“A lot of it is possibly overuse, but that’s not for us to judge,” he cautioned. “If you call 911 we’re going to give you 100 percent service, and our personal opinions really don’t matter at that point.”

However, some patients often appear to simply want to get to the front of the line to cross and use the ambulance as a “taxi service,” according to some firefighters, but the issue’s subjective nature makes it hard to quantify how often this is happening.

If the downtown Port of Entry had its own ambulance service, it could free up the Fire Department’s time and resources to respond to other calls, some firefighters contend.

Many people moved to Mexicali after the housing market crashed in the Imperial Valley, Calexico fire Capt. Pete Navarro said, but those receiving Medi-Cal are required to reside in the U.S.

Patients at the Port of Entry routinely tell the first responder that they’re “just visiting” Mexicali and borrow stateside addresses for the paperwork, he said.

“Sometimes they’ll even say if I go by ambulance, the hospital will treat me faster, and it’s not true,” Navarro said.

Calls to ports were so taxing on the Calexico Fire Department at one point, it narrowed its response area to no longer include the Calexico East Port of Entry.

Not unique to Calexico

These situations are in part simply the nature of being a border fire department.

San Luis, Ariz., Fire Department Public Information Officer Luis Cebreros said his department sees similar situations.

“We do have some frequent people that abuse the system,” he said. “We can’t say to anybody we can’t transport you because we think you’re a faker. We do say the ambulance service isn’t a taxi and also try to explain to them there’s other means like taxis, friends, family members … That’s not really fair to just get to the head of the line.”

Cebreros said the federal government in his area has certified paramedics to reduce the calls to the port, and the San Luis Fire Department has two ambulances so it’s in a better position than Calexico, which only has one.

He said he believes better educating the public on proper ambulance use and costs as well as the federal government’s use of technology such as telemedicine could help alleviate the issue.

Who’s requesting service?

At times it becomes confusing as to who is making the request for service.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Public Affairs Officer John Campos said that while the downtown Port of Entry has first responders trained to provide first aid, they aren’t paramedics, and the officers only call the Fire Department if the traveler requests an ambulance.

Mercado said a recurring issue is when patients at the Port of Entry say they didn’t request the service but “the federal agency that’s calling us, in this case, the Port of Entry, is using us as a diagnostic tool to evaluate that patient before they take them into custody.

“We’re put in that weird position where normally the person who calls you should be obligated to pay for service if there is a fee involved,” he said.

It becomes difficult to be reimbursed for those calls, he said, and that’s why it’s critical to get the proper information on billing sheets.

Armando Garcia, supervisory Border Patrol agent for the El Centro Sector public affairs office, said all agents are trained as first responders, and about 50 agents in the El Centro Sector are certified emergency medical technicians who can transport minor injuries.

However, those agents work in a variety of areas in the county besides Calexico and on different shifts so it’s a “matter of having resources available.”

A treatment authorization request allows the Fire Department to be reimbursed through the federal agency, but that only happens when the Border Patrol has the patient in custody.

Resulting equipment stress from all these calls is an even bigger issue for the Fire Department in the cash-strapped city.

Answer not local

Mercado said it’s something that needs to change at the federal level.

“I wish there would be a better way for us to work with them as far as capturing funding that our resources are attending to,” Mercado said. “If we’re responding because a federal agency requests us, they should be obligated to pay for our service.”

In hopes of providing some relief, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista, introduced the “Save our Border Communities Act of 2011” in February last year to authorize “federal payment to first responders for costs associated with providing emergency services at the international borders of the United States.”

“In these times of economic hardship, our local communities cannot afford to do the federal government’s job! Border-related incidents have increasingly become a major drain on our local police, firefighters and first responders,” Filner wrote in an e-mail.

However, Congress hasn’t taken up Filner’s bill and in his eyes is “moving in the wrong direction” by cutting funding to various state and local grant programs.

The “Save our Borders” community bill and others that could authorize funds to border municipalities have been stalling as far back as 2007.

“It seems it’s eventually topic of the week, month or year and then something else happens and we’re back at it,” Mercado said.

One Old Vet

Border fire departments shoulder border costs but receive no funding - ivpressonline.com