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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u201cUsually, the problem is in late afternoons. Our system picks up right around noon and it\u2019ll extend to about 8\u2019clock and that\u2019s when you see our system critically stretched at that time,\u201d said Robert Weech, Polk County Fire Rescue Chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an update to County Commissioners, Weech said ambulances are having to wait longer to transfer patients to hospitals due to an increase in 911 calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polk County\u2019s EMS division went from 280 calls a day to now an average of 340 calls per day. But Weech said there have been no significant delays in response time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are pockets that have one or 2 minutes additional response time. There are also a couple of pockets experiencing more than that. Up to 4 minutes additional response time,\u201d said Weech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u201cCertainly, if you have an emergency, stroke, heart attack, accident, fire at your house, certainly call 911. We don\u2019t want to deter that, but if you have other ways of getting the medical care you need to exhaust those at this time,\u201d Weech said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That way, EMS can deal with other emergencies during this critical time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ambulances backed up outside of Lakeland Regional\u2019s ER could be seen multiple times earlier this week. \u201cUsually, the problem is in late afternoons. Our system picks up right around noon… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[1056],"class_list":["post-14386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-polk-ems-is-critically-strained"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/amb-at-Lakeland.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n