Texas Police, EMS: Business as Usual for Halloween Weekend
Nov. 02--
The triple-threat of a Friday night, Halloween and a downtown music festival for Formula One fans produced an uptick of wrecks, injuries and other emergencies, but Austin's police and EMS departments said Saturday that it still felt like business as usual.
Austin police and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services said they had planned ahead to have extra officers and resources available downtown to address any out-of-bounds behavior or emergency in a packed downtown.
Police sent extra officers to staff the barricades surrounding Fan Fest, which filled Fourth Street with booths, music stages and a few F1 race cars along streets west of Congress Avenue.
Austin-Travis County EMS also assigned extra resources to downtown, including special response units riding in four-wheeled Gator vehicles with stretchers attached. EMS also deployed "motormedics," paramedics on motorcycles.
Both allow EMS to reach emergencies more quickly, especially on a busy street, EMS Cmdr. Mike Benavides said.
There were a few injuries involving cars hitting pedestrians, including one car that struck a skateboarder, Benavides said. The additional mobile EMS units are very useful for reaching scenes that involve driving through downtown, he said. One of the motor medics was able to quickly respond to a four-vehicle wreck on 11th Street with 10 patients Friday night, Benavides said.
"It's kind of weird this year because we have so many events happening in the same weekend," he said. "We were more than capable of handling all the additional volume, and that's because we preplanned."
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