Working Together

How 9-1-1/EMS/fire departments work together to provide EMS service. . .

Pinellas County answers your 9-1-1 medical emergency with a single tier, dual response EMS system. You get an advanced life support (ALS) response countywide, in any one of our 24 municipalities or anywhere in between.

Every 9-1-1 call in Pinellas County is answered in the lower level of the Pinellas County Courthouse Annex in downtown Clearwater. Here, trained 9-1-1 call takers, dispatchers and radio operators work in unison to ensure that vehicles get rolling to your medical emergency within 24 seconds on average.

For every medical emergency, simultaneous with the dispatch of fire rescue vehicles, a Sunstar paramedic ambulance is sent to the scene as well.

Two vehicles, each with lights and siren, one from the fire department and the other from Sunstar paramedic ambulance service, travel to your medical emergency. Our EMS system assures that emergency medical help arrives on scene within 4.5 minutes as a countywide average.

Emergency crews bring with them a vast array of advanced life support medical equipment. This equipment allows crews to stop the bleeding, breath for a patient and even restart a heart with a state-of-the art 12-lead defibrillator.

Fire department and Sunstar personnel usually stay on scene with a patient for an average of 25 minutes. If a patient requires transportation to an area hospital, the transport will be performed by Sunstar paramedic ambulance service. This frees up the fire department crews and allows them to go back into service, ready to respond to another medical emergency, even before they get back to their fire station.