Fire, EMS teams spend quiet nights preparing for busy ones

A quiet night is a good night.

The panel of alarms on the wall don’t flash. The phone doesn’t ring with dispatches to emergencies. Fire engine and ambulance sirens stay silent and dark.

Those are the nights that the fire and Emergency Medical Services teams on duty have time to complete the monthly testing of fire extinguishers, inspect buildings and complete routine maintenance. 

There’s time to take myriad required training – courses that, if interrupted during a busier day shift, would have to be retaken. Time to drill with Pro Force, the lab’s law enforcement, for emergencies such as bomb threats or evacuations.

There’s plenty of time to inventory and sterilize the ambulance of highly specialized equipment, which gives them the capability to perform nearly any procedure, up to and including advanced life support.

“Most of the things that you can do in the ER, we can do in the back of this truck,” said Chayse Lyon, who is a fire captain and a paramedic. The exception is imaging, such CT or MRI scans. Lyon and his peers, if called on, can pack wounds, reverse allergic reactions, treat hypothermia with warmed IVs, clear airways via suction, perform a tracheotomy, restart your heart. If time is too short to fool with finding a vein, they can drill directly into the bone marrow to administer fluids in seconds. And, because ORNL has nuclear facilities, they have a full complement of hazmat/radiation decontamination supplies to contain contamination on the way to the hospital. Along with it is an in-depth protocol book that serves as a valuable reference resource for nearly any situation.

“If there’s any second-guessing on what’s going to happen, it’s all in here,” Lyon said.

Lyon has been at ORNL for three years, but he’s been a paramedic for 11. Like many of ORNL’s fire/EMS staff, he previously worked for Rural/Metro. Others come from various city, county and regional fire departments. Once at ORNL, few leave before retirement.

“This is where the best of the best ends up,” said fire protection inspector Michael Ridge, who was a fire captain for a local agency before coming to the lab in early 2025. “I wanted to be part of that group. You bring large amounts of experience when you come out there, and it’s from different departments everywhere.”

This breadth of experience ensures an elite team on any shift, said Fire Department Battalion Chief James Beets. 

“They know what they’re doing,” Beets said. “I let them do their job, and we don’t have any issues. I know what their capabilities are, they know what mine are, and they know who I want to respond, and how.”

Beets’ team includes six FPIs and a captain, who work a rotating swing shift of three days and three nights followed by four days off, then four more days and then six days off. Many have to adjust from working 24-hour shifts in their previous jobs.

“Starting out, it was a little bit difficult, especially coming in at 7 a.m. for consecutive days rather than having 24 hours between shifts, but it wasn’t a bad transition at all,” Lyon said. 

The pace is different from the outside world, too: a few calls per shift, rather a few per hour. The calls that do come in are often critical − medical emergencies, building evacuations, fires, hazmat or radiation contamination – but sometimes routine, like clearing roads or other tasks necessary to ensure safety.

“We stay ready for anything,” Beets said.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science. — Hailey Blair and Kristi L. Bumpus