Search still on for emergency equipment

No one can account for the missing items, which include radios, a stretcher and a CPR machine.

By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 8, 2000

LECANTO -- For weeks now, county Public Safety Director Charles Poliseno has been on a scavenger hunt for some old equipment and the answer to a year-old mystery:

How did 10 portable or mobile radios, an ambulance stretcher and a "thumper" machine used to perform CPR simply vanish?

Poliseno spent last week crawling through ambulances, rummaging through supplies areas, and searching ambulance and fire stations in Citrus County looking, in vain, for the equipment and the mystery's answer.

"These things may not necessarily be lost," Poliseno said. "They are just in a different place than the last time we saw them."

For some of the items, he said, the last sighting was a year ago. Other items have been missing for more than two years.

It's not that the equipment is worth much anymore. The county paid just $24,256 when it bought all 12 items in the mid 1980s and early 1990s; since then, the items have seen wear and tear, and newer models have come onto the market.

Poliseno said the county owns enough other radios, stretchers and CPR machines. It doesn't need to buy replacements for the 12 missing items.

But the time has come for officials to either find the equipment, or declare the items lost and remove them from the county inventory.

"We're just checking every place one more time before we say that we just can't find it," Poliseno said.

It is not unusual for EMS equipment to get switched around among the county's nine ambulances, seven ambulance stations and 22 fire stations, Poliseno said.

Anytime an ambulance goes for repairs, or a paramedic reports to a different station, the portable equipment can get swapped, he said.

Florida Regional EMS provides the ambulance service for the multicounty area that includes Citrus, Hernando, Sumter and Lake counties. Poliseno said equipment that started here could have migrated a Tavares-based ambulance or a Brooksville station.

In the coming weeks, the next leg of Poliseno's scavenger hunt will take him into those counties to look for the missing equipment.

Poliseno will complete his search before Florida Regional EMS pulls out of Citrus County Oct. 1. At that time, all county-owned EMS equipment will go to the Nature Coast Emergency Medical Foundation, the county-created, not-for-profit corporation that will run the ambulance service.

It was the county's annual inventory, not Florida Regional's pending departure, that sparked the latest searches for the 12 missing pieces of EMS equipment, Poliseno said.

Citrus County keeps track of its belongings through an asset number placed on each piece of county-owned equipment. Deputy Clerk Lynn Floyd spends about nine months out of each year making sure the county's 7,000 pieces of equipment are accounted for.

Sometimes the items show up in different places from one year to the next, but rarely do items disappear altogether, said Floyd's supervisor, County Clerk's Finance Director Sarah Koser.

"Occasionally we do have items that are missing, but usually they are located somewhere," Koser said. "I wouldn't say it's a large occurrence."

After an exhaustive search, any items that cannot be found are removed from the county's inventory.

Items are also removed from the inventory list if they are replaced with newer models.

For example, the county's road maintenance division has three items to take off the list: a screen table, a set of flashing lights for a school zone and a pair of power slitting shears. According to records, those items aren't lost -- just obsolete.

With three more counties left to search, Poliseno said he is still holding out hope that some of the equipment will surface.

"It's elusive, and it is a little bit frustrating," Poliseno said. "But it's just going to take time to sort through all of it."

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