SEATTLE — When Seattle Fire Department units leave the station, they're not only heading out for heart attacks, car crashes or burning buildings.
They often end up downtown helping people who are in crisis, but whose lives are not immediately threatened.
"I do see them respond a lot down here," Harry George, Jr. said in a part of Pioneer Square filled with people who don't have homes and are often battling addiction.
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KIRO 7 asked about the idea of something other than a quick visit by firefighters.
"To take time and talk with them, yeah, I think that would be better to talk to people and see what's really going on with them," George said.
Taking that time is the idea behind Health One, a new response strategy the city announced Tuesday.
"We have units to take people to the hospital all day long," said Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins. "Our goal is for this unit to take people to places other than hospitals."
Late this year, two specially-trained firefighters in a medic unit or Suburban will head out with a social worker, providing dispatchers a new option when they receive non-urgent 911 calls.
The Health One team will take extra time, maybe driving people to a shelter or clinic, but likely not to the emergency room for an expensive visit.
"We're reserving our emergency responses for true emergencies," Mayor Jenny Durkan said.
The city says in 2018, 42 percent of medical calls were for non-life threatening situations.
The city is spending $500,000 to try Health One for a year with a single unit.
"I believe there is tremendous demand for this," Durkan said. "And I believe it will be one of the new urban devices used across this country."
Cox Media Group