Brevard County Emergency Medical Services Announces Response-Enhancing Operational Changes
Brevard County Emergency Medical Services will make operational changes to maintain quick response times and ensure advanced life support services are available for patients’ needs.
Brevard County Fire Rescue is working closely with community partners to ease the strain from Rockledge Hospital’s upcoming closure.
As part of this effort, Brevard County EMS will implement a process change and coordinate with Coastal Ambulance Systems to provide non-life-threatening patient transportation to the hospital effective Monday, April 7.
• 911 calls may be triaged to ensure the correct resources are dispatched for patients.A
• Brevard County Fire Rescue may respond to a call, assess the patient, and contact CAS to transport the patient to a local hospital for non-emergency cases.
The advocacy group Moms Demand Action visits the Florida Legislature to oppose lowering the legal age to buy long guns
The Florida House of Representatives has again passed a bill that would lower the age for buying long guns. In 2018, a shooter at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and faculty members, prompting the Legislature to raise the purchase age to buy rifles and shotguns to 21. The shadow of Parkland still hangs over Florida.
On Tuesday, Moms Demand Action members urged lawmakers not to pass the age change. The group’s executive director, Angela Ferrell-Zabala, remembers how, after Parkland, then-Gov. Rick Scott and a bipartisan group of legislators worked to prevent what she calls, quote, “another senseless tragedy.”
“To actually roll that back right now is just a slap in the face to survivors and advocates that worked so hard for this change to ensure public safety,” she said.
The House easily passed the bill dropping the age of purchase to 18. The vote was 78-34 with Republicans largely in support. Many of the arguments for lowering the age of purchase center around the Second Amendment — which enshrines the right to own weapons in the U.S. Constitution.
The age change may have passed the House, but it hasn’t budged in the Senate.
This month, the NRA lost a challenge to Florida’s age law. A circuit court upheld the constitutionality of raising the minimum age to purchase long guns from 18 to 21. The ruling is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Climate center foresees another active hurricane season in 2025
According to an early forecast issued this week, prepare yourselves for what could be another active hurricane season this year.
Scientists at the Climate Adaptation Center in Sarasota said warm sea temperatures and low wind shear could contribute to the predicted 17 named storms and 10 hurricanes, five of them major.
Bob Bunting, the nonprofit's CEO and atmospheric scientist, said there's also likely going to be less dust blowing in from the Sahara Desert.
"And when we have less dust, we have more hurricanes," Bunting said.
The National Hurricane Center’s new baseline for number of storms is now an average of 14 per year, but Bunting said when you look at the last decade, it’s actually more like 18.
Fram2 shows off polar orbit mission
The first humans to orbit Earth’s polar regions showed off some impressive photos and videos of Earth’s ice caps, x-rays, and more during the Fram2 mission.
Wednesday Cmdr. Chun Wang posted on X, “Good Morning Antarctica. Unlike previously anticipated, from 460 km above, it is only pure white, no human activity is visible.”
The crew is doing various projects, hosting Fram2Ham, an amateur radio competition, and taking aurora photos for the SolarMax project.
More: www.floridatoday.com