Excursion Day (Wednesday)

Mures County Dispatch Centre

This morning I ran in the forest up the hill behind us again and struggled against a lot of boggy mud; even running on cobblestones isn't exactly smooth travelling compared to the footpaths at home! After that the hostel breakfast lady surprised us with cereal instead of bread ham and cheese!

Attila, our new favourite person, led us to the middle of town where we found the Mures County Emergency Dispatch Centre. The setup was very impressive and a completely new experience for most of us who have never got to be on the other side of  emergency calls. We entered a large room and the first thing we saw was a wall of massive video screens. These provided constant monitoring of different locations in the city and footage zooming in up to 1km! Police, Fire services and Medical Emergency services work together in a team of 5 operators who answer all calls and a second team of 5 experts and chiefs who determine priority and resource allocation. Only 10 people work in this single room dispatch centre and they receive 2400 calls a day but a whopping 80% of them are fake! We asked the cause and were told that many teenagers aren't educated on emergency numbers and call up for fun.

Dispatch Centre

Mures County: Targu Mures is in the middle and all the yellow dots are evenly spaced emergency bases; this helps with very good response times

Ambulance jobs make up the majority of the real calls so it's a pretty important service! The calls are designated as Priority Red (response time 8min), Priority Yellow (RT 15min) and Priority Green (RT 30min). We were very surprised that ED doctors even take shifts in the Dispatch centre as the 'medical expert'. The level of cross-training here in Romania is incredible. These doctors work rotating shifts between the SMURD helicopter, in all the different Emergency Department sections, in the ambulance, and dispatch. It makes for a very fluid system with great communication and understanding! Dr Arafad who started up the SMURD program was the mastermind behind this system and Mures County has the best in Romania! The Chief Manager of Dispatch gave us a complete history lesson and gave up hours of his time to answer our million questions! Like we experience with many Romanians, he apologised profusely for his poor English and then proceded to speak in near perfect English the whole morning, and tried to match our humour with cracking a couple of not-quite-appropriate-for-here jokes with us! We got some live entertainment at the end of our visit: we saw footage of a car parking inappropriately, a politia vehicle was immediately dispatched and then moments later blinking sirens appeared on the screen and we saw the offending driver of the illegally parked car hurriedly rush back in and drive off as the police car began pursuit!

SMURD Fire Station

Pompierii = fire fighting service

Obtaining entrance to the fire station required signed paperwork and passports but Attila sorted all that out for us to the immense excitement of Hannah and Tori especially, who are avid fans of "Chicago Fire". This was the centre for the paramedics base, fire fighter accomodation and training, and specialised emergency vehicles. We saw the "Noua Nascuti Ambulance" (for neonates), a multi-victim transport truck, a chemical retardant vehicle, special emergency vehicle for bomb incidents, and a snow-traverser with caterpillar wheels that could also float and had a stretcher in the back. SMURD is very well equipped and in the event of a major catastrophe emergency staff are very quickly mobilised since all staff carry a radio on their person 24/7 in 6-month rotations!! We couldn't believe it but Attila, an ED & ambulance nurse said it is fine for him.
Attila made sure we had a traditional Hungarian lunch (because "none of this pizza!") which for me meant stuffed cabbage rolls and ribs. There's some pretty good dishes here really but cabbage is the closest we get to vegies!

They can elevate their stretcher beds!

Caterpillar car for snow and water

Silver chemical retardant vehicle

Multi casualty transport vehicle

Since it's our last few nights we are cranking up the party spirit; this meant drinks at the downtown pub with Attila (where they sell non alcoholic beer!). Some of us had dessert at 2am over vigorous discussion about the events back home and the #illridewithyoucampaign. Seriously loving spending time with these 5 great people!!