Calhoun County EMS unveils new county training facility

Those passing by Calhoun County EMS (CCEMS) may have noticed a new building spring up over the last year. Featuring large garage doors and a connected walking path to the station proper, the structure is relatively undecorated on its exterior. However, according to CCEMS Director Dustin Jenkins, the new facility contains a new cornerstone in the future of emergency response in the area.

Built by CCEMS and Jenkins with Calhoun County Commissioners Court approval, the CCEMS Training Facility aims to serve as a new training hub not just to accommodate all of EMS, but first responders as a whole, Dustin said.

“We need more training — specifically, training for everyone together. The time when I went out for the grant, we didn’t have a good training facility that could do classroom and didactic skill-type training on a larger scale,” Jenkins said.

Prior to the construction of the facility, Dustin explained that CCEMS struggled to provide comprehensive and simultaneous training to all personnel at once. Out of the more than 30 staff members employed by CCEMS, only 10 to 15 could be trained at a given time, he stated. With the new facility, which can accommodate upwards of 50, the entire department can be trained simultaneously.

“Our training room here in our station could only accommodate 15 to 20 people. Our full-time staff consists of 30 people, and we also have approximately 20 part-time staff members. The largest training, not including training with law enforcement or fire together, we could facilitate was 10 to 15 people,” Jenkins said. “If we’re doing training, one team might get called out for a call.

Alongside CCEMS personnel, the expanded training facility will also allow for cross-department training, Dustin continued. This will allow for greater coordination with other first responders such as Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office, Port Lavaca Fire Department and Port Lavaca Police Department and other emergency response teams.

“Our department meetings and trainings have been at the Bauer Exhibit Hall down the road and all of our equipment is huge and bulky - mannequins and pig lungs and other things that are hard to transport. With the new facility, we can leave our equipment out,” Jenkins said. “I’m hoping to use this to facilitate a lot of tactical training, and I hope to incorporate the police and sheriff department – I want to train them more on the medical side. We were already doing training with other first responding organizations in our small facility, but if everyone we invited showed, there’d be no room. But now there is room.”

The facility itself was built over the course of a year, with the majority of work being done by CCEMS staff, Jenkins said. Now finished, the facility features several storage areas and displays alongside internet capabilities, air-conditioning and even additional showers.

“When working inside, we also have more comfortable panels on the ground, which is definitely better than asphalt,” Jenkins said.

Ambulances can also be rolled in through mechanical doors for vehicle training and familiarization exercises during rough weather. Additional room also allows for larger exercises, such as CPR and skin suturing, to be done with several demonstrations at once.

“We start IVs every day, we take blood pressure every day. But we don’t do surgical cricothyrotomies or needle decompressions every day. This gives us a facility that we can practice on that we don’t do every day, but we can still practice them,” Jenkins said. “There are some skills that first responders never do. It’s very rare for police officers to draw their guns and fire in active duty, but they practice shooting for hours at a time. Some skills are like that for us. There are skills we don’t do every day. It takes that repetition to be prepared.”  

While additional space allows for larger exercises, its connection to the station’s generator also lets CCEMS use the facility as another base of operations and shelter during emergencies and emergency response efforts. Overall, Jenkins said that he hopes the facility serves the community as a whole, bringing together the various departments and bringing county emergency response to the next level.

“Specifically, this is for all first responders to train together or separately on the medical side of first response. But if they want to book it for their own, they can do that as well,” Jenkins said. “We want to train the best because the people we serve deserve the best.”

For more information or questions regarding CCEMS, Jenkins can be reached at Dustin.jenkins@calhouncotx.org.