It's probably one of the more treacherous, or at least troubling places, to deal with the obesity epidemic in America: ambulance and emergency services.
And it's one of the reasons Jenn Vasquez, one of Carroll County's eight full-time paramedics, spoke to the Carroll Rotary Club Monday.
The ambulance service is looking to add to its inventory of Stryker Power Pro Cots, devices that make it easier to lift increasingly heavier victims.
"Every one of us is bearing more weight than is safe," Vasquez said. "In all seriousness our work is becoming heavier."
In recent days local emergency-response officials have told both the Rotary Club and Butch Heman of the Carroll Daily Times Herald - who wrote a feature on the ambulance service last Friday - that the average weight of victims has shot up dramatically, that it is not unusual to be transporting people over 300 pounds, or even more than 500 pounds.
The service recently bought two of the Stryker Power Pro cots and plans to add four over the next two years, Heman reports.
"The former nonmechanized cots were rated to hold no more than 500 pounds, and it would take muscle from paramedics and first responders on all sides to get a large patient moved," Heman writes. "Powered by a rechargeable 24-volt battery, the new cot can easily lift a patient weighing as much as 700 pounds."
The service says they have come close to seeing if that threshold, well, holds.
After the Rotary meeting, Vasquez told the Daily Times Herald the cots aren't just better for working with overweight people.
"It's a more stable cot, and it offers our patients a feeling of security," Vasquez said.
The Strykers cost $12,000 each. The Rotaty Club is considering donations, and others interested in doing so may send checks to the Carroll County Ambulance Service, 203 E. Third St, 51401.
For her part, Vasquez, 31, a Carroll resident and mother of three children, said the ambulance service is more than a career.
"It's not just a job, what I do," Vasquez said. "It truly is part of what I am."
With some recent tragedies locally involving teens, alcohol or driver error and fatal accidents, and some high-profile accidents with young drivers around the state in past weeks, The Des Moines Register this past weekend carried a lead story on the issue of teen driving. Should there be more restrictions, changes to the way state licenses young drivers?
Alcohol, obviously, is a well-chronicled culprit, and this newspaper has editorialized on that angle repeatedly through the years.
"Honestly, I think our approach begins with our adults," Vasquez said. "Our children learn from example."
But Vasquez, while acknowledging the often deadly intersection of partying and driving in Carroll County, says another concern is that rural drivers need to be taught differently in Iowa, mainly with more focus on gravel roads.
Inexperienced drivers often have serious troubles navigating gravel.
"I think our young people are being put out there (on gravel) in a 2,000-pound vehicle and they don't have a clue what to do," Vasquez said.
She has covered three accidents involving child fatalities in her five years with the service.
