READING, Pa. \u2014 Thursday afternoon, this parking lot and the Bellevue Avenue bridge in Muhlenberg Township, Berks County, were packed with hundreds of people waiting for the Big Boy train.<\/p>\n
But with temperatures reaching 106 degrees and the train delayed for more than an hour, many people became sick.<\/p>\n
“Once we gave them either oral hydration or IV hydration, their color came back,” said Brad Cosgrove, Director-in-Chief of EMS for Tower Direct.<\/p>\n
Cosgrove was one of the EMS leaders who helped coordinate the response. He says getting fluids to patients as quickly as possible made a big difference.<\/p>\n
“They perked up really quick. Thankfully, nothing was too serious that some hydration and monitoring couldn’t handle for the most part,” Cosgrove said.<\/p>\n
Officials say more than 100 people were treated, about 45 were taken to hospitals, while many others recovered after being treated at the scene.<\/p>\n
“It was a little bit chaotic. I don’t think anyone anticipated the weather or the volume of crowds… but all the agencies involved really banded together,” Cosgrove said.<\/p>\n
A Mass Casualty Incident was declared, bringing in crews from neighboring counties, along with a medical bus, a cooling bus and additional emergency resources.<\/p>\n
“Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Know your limits. If you’re feeling faint, sit down, get into the shade and look out for each other,” Cosgrove said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 Thursday afternoon, this parking lot and the Bellevue Avenue bridge in Muhlenberg Township, Berks County,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,279,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-235012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-berks","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}