First of all, just for clarification, particularly for our international members, yes the Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) is the sole EMS provider within the city limits of Los Angeles. Every LAFD Firefighter is trained at a minimum to the EMT-Basic level, and many are indeed Paramedics. Their Rescue Ambulances are all staffed either dual FF/EMT or dual FF/PM (Members do rotate regularly between the "box" and the suppression apparatus, I believe they strive to staff each engine company and truck company with at least one paramedic when staffing allows).
The video starts after LAFD is on scene. We do not know how long they were on scene prior to the video starting but it does look like they had only arrived seconds earlier and are still assessing the situation.
We first see the patient 0:16 into the video where I am a little perplexed over the one firefighter who walked by her. What we do not know is how she ended up in that position or how long she's been there. Did she truly get partially ejected during the crash and land like that? Was she helped out of the car and assisted to the ground, either by a bystander or maybe even that same firefighter? We simply do not know, there's not enough information in the video to truly pass judgment.
However it does look like he is part of the truck company, and it does look like they just arrived on scene within seconds of the video start, so they're most likely still assessing the scene, such as how many patients are there? How many are in that car, how many in the other? Are any of the bystanders patients? Is there anyone trapped, is there any extrication required? What other hazards need to be mitigated before scene safety is assured? That's the truck company's primary job on a call like this, extrication and hazard mitigation.
What we DO know from the video, after we first see the patient at 0:16, the camera person then immediately walks away towards the back of the taxi cab where we can no longer see the patient and what is or is not being done with her. You can see at 0:40 (25 seconds after our first "patient contact") that the Rescue Ambulance has arrived on scene and is directly in front of her (and when we get a look at which Rescue it is later I can tell you that is an ALS Paramedic Rescue due to its two digit unit number..all the BLS EMT Rescues have an 800 series unit number).
After focusing on the crowd for a bit, in the background, 1 min after pt contact at approx 1:16 we can see the medics assessing the patient. So we have paramedics working on the patient 1 min after we first see her while the truck guys are doing truck tasks, identifying and mitigating any of the many possible hazards a traffic collision scene like this presents.
There appears to be an edit shortly thereafter at 1:22, can't be sure exactly how much time was edited out, though it does appear to be no more than a few seconds. The cameraman then walks back around to where we can see the patient at approx 1:45, barely a min after we first see her, the patient is loaded on the backboard on the gurney with what looks to be at least 5 firefighters directly assessing her injuries, trauma stripping her clothes as part of said assessment and securing her to the board.
We all know that even a simple traffic collision call is far more chaotic and things don't happen the same nice neat way they go down in the vacuum of a classroom. The only thing I can find in the video to truly have any real concern about is the one firefighter walking past the patient in the opening seconds, I would much rather have seen him at least stop and talk to her for a bit, hold c-spine until the Rescue medics arrive, but really, as I said earlier, we don't know what assessment she has had or not had already and there are lots of other important tasks all needing immediate attention all at the same time.....and 1 minute after this one concern, she is actively being assessed and treated and being readied for transport, so yes while we can certainly Monday morning quarterback everything we would have done differently or better, ultimately I am not terribly concerned about this crews performance on this call.
