By Jason Islas
Staff Writer

August 9, 2013 -- For most people who travel by car around Santa Monica's hotspots, dealing with gridlock is just part of life. It's something to be approached with varying degrees of resignation or acceptance.

While that gridlock may only cause a spike in blood pressure for the average motorist, it could be a matter of life and death if it blocks paramedics from reaching the scene of an accident, causing them to lose precious seconds.

That's why the Santa Monica Fire Department decided to have six of its first responders ditch the fire truck for more agile, two-wheeled vehicles.

Dispatching first responders on bicycles “allows us to get to patients quicker in a congested atmosphere,” said Captain Michael McElvaney.

Santa Monica's Fire Department started the medics on bikes program more than a year ago when it was awarded a $22,500 grant by DeWitt Stern and Fireman's Fund Insurance Company.

The grant was enough to buy six bikes and outfit them with all the basic materials needed by first responders to help diagnose “potentially life-threatening cardiac events,” SMFD officials said.

The bikes are also equipped with defibrillators, used to jump-start the heart after it has lost its normal rhythm.

SMFD reserves its group of six bike-deployed medics only for special occasions or particularly crowded days, McElvaney said.

“We don't deploy them regularly,” he said. “We're not using the bikes anywhere east of the beach area.”

The bikes are effective when medics have to navigate through traffic that is inching along, and the main place where that is a problem is along Santa Monica's beaches, especially during the summer, McElvaney said.

The bike medics -- who are deployed in teams of two -- got their first test during the 2012 marathon, using the bikes to navigate large portions of Santa Monica and Los Angeles streets closed to vehicles.

“The first deployment we had was 28 patient contacts,” said McElvaney. “At the marathon, we get a lot of runners who pass out.”

Others, as they come into the finish line, will sometime trip and fall, he said.

The last time the bike medics were out in force was Santa Monica's annual Fourth of July parade, which passed without incident.

Still, with the city's population sometimes swelling to more than 100,000 on weekends, McElvaney thinks there's room for expansion of the program. But that would only mean more patrols, not necessarily more bikes.

“Expansion would come in the way of more deployment,” he said. “In the summer here in Santa Monica, we could really deploy them every weekend.

“That's a matter of being able to finance that deployment,” McElvaney said. “We're hoping to do that.”

One source of funding could come from the Pier Restoration Corporation, which sometimes pays for police overtime during special events.

To learn more about the grant program and other grants awarded in California, visit www.firemansfund.com/heritage. To learn more about the rich history of Fireman’s Fund, visit www.firemansfund.com/timeline or www.firemansfund.com/film.