Vanderbilt LifeFlight is offering ground and air medical assistance for patients impacted by Hurricane Irma.
Since Thursday, LifeFlight’s airplane, which is based at Nashville International Airport, has been flying patients hospitalized in Miami and relocating them to Sarasota, Florida, and Atlanta. LifeFlight’s airplane is also on standby for potential evacuation of patients in other East Coast cities.
A LifeFlight ambulance left Nashville this morning (Sept. 8) as part of a group from Tennessee EMS Region 6 Strike Team Deployment to provide assistance. These units joined multiple teams of Tennessee health care professionals that began deploying from Chattanooga on Friday, Sept. 8, to travel to Florida to work with local, state and federal officials in response to Hurricane Irma.
The first of five EMS-staffed ambulance strike teams, with 57 total members, will depart from the Volunteer Air National Guard Armory in Chattanooga at noon Eastern Time today. A nurse-staffed strike team is expected to deploy from Chattanooga to Florida on Saturday.
EMS and nurse strike teams, along with incident management teams, include Tennessee Department of Health employees and representatives from more than 20 city and county agencies and hospitals from across the state. These teams include paramedics, advanced emergency medical technicians and public health professionals.
EMS response teams from Middle Tennessee include Bedford County EMS, Hickman County EMS, Moore County EMS and Vanderbilt LifeFlight.