There’s been quite a bit of news lately about Monday of a few weeks back, when ambulances were piled up waiting on available space at emergency rooms in Rochester. Apparently, E.R.s have been operating in “Code Red” over-capacity for months, now. It looks as though this problem is getting quite a bit of discussion within the medical community as well, as 13WHAM.com reports:

Emergency Care Investigation - 13WHAM.com

Mark Tornstrom, of Monroe Ambulance, said, “Monday, quite honestly, we ran out of resources and if there had been a catastrophic event, we really would’ve had difficulty and that is a major concern and one that has sparked a lot of discussion in our community.”

The last I knew, while Genesee was closed, it’s E.R. was to remain open. Does anyone know if this changed? Is that contributing to the problem? If not, what is? Nothing is mentioned in the report.

However, one thing that is in the report which gets scant mention elsewhere:

Emergency Care Investigation - 13WHAM.com

While ambulances backed up, an alert from an incoming airplane added to the chaos. Tornstorm said, “There was an alert for an airplane crash, and the normal amount of resources that we put on standby were not available.”

Exqueeze me? What the hell happened there?