A Year-End Review: Tying Up Some of the Loose Ends From ’84 : A Historic Pact

The May 30 death of paramedic training nurse Linda Jefferis, who suffered a heart seizure on a section of the Harbor Freeway where jurisdictional confusion left five available paramedic units undispatched to help her, had already shaken the Los Angeles’ emergency medical system establishment when View reported on the case in June.

The ironic tragedy was that Jefferis had been one of the key figures in developing the paramedic system here--one that is now nationally recognized as the forerunner of paramedic systems nationwide. Popular and well-known in emergency medicine circles, Jefferis, when she died, was an emergency services administrator with the county Department of Health Services.

After the story was published, however, the Los Angeles City Fire Department and Los Angeles County Fire Department completed negotiations on a historic agreement that is intended, fire officials say, to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Jefferis, 40, died in part because the Harbor Freeway’s route follows a half-mile wide section of the City of Los Angeles that is surrounded by unincorporated county territory and several South Bay cities.

Because the actual city geography is so limited, the area, called the Shoe-String Strip, has long been shortchanged in terms of emergency services. There was no mechanism by which county Fire Department rescue squads or units from surrounding cities were automatically dispatched to the strip. City units with responsibility for the area were on other calls when Jefferis suffered her seizure.

Within weeks after the Jefferis death, however, the city and county departments signed an agreement under which county paramedic units are now automatically sent to calls in the Shoe-String Strip area when city units aren’t available or are too far away. The city Fire Department’s computer system automatically identifies call locations to which the county units are to be sent and dispatchers for the two departments cooperate in actually sounding the alarm.

Chief Jon Fasana, head of the city Fire Department’s paramedic program, said that, in addition to the new agreement, city and county fire officials have organized a countywide conference to be held early in 1985 at which the chiefs of every fire department in the county will meet to iron out inconsistencies in the emergency medical services system.

The city has also completed an agreement with the El Segundo Fire Department in which that small city’s agency responds automatically to paramedic calls in the City of Los Angeles just outside its borders and Los Angeles city fire units automatically are sent to some fire calls in El Segundo. The El Segundo agreement, Fasana said, could become a model for similar relationships with other smaller municipalities.

“Things have gotten better and they are going to be better yet,” Fasana said.

And Linda Jefferis’ memory has survived. On Dec. 14, a mural was dedicated in her memory in the lobby of the Paramedic Training Institute in Torrance. Created by artist Elaine Katzer of San Pedro, the three-dimensional work in ceramic tile depicts a humpback whale swimming with three dolphins.

It touches on several themes that pervaded Linda Jefferis’ life, according to her friends. Said Sue Barnes, administrator of the institute: “It’s meant to convey the idea that the Earth does not belong to man, but that man belongs to the Earth.”