FAYETTE COUNTY, Texas — Over the weekend, Fayette County EMS responded to two overdose incidents involving fentanyl.
These two incidents marked the fourth already in the month of January, and more than Fayette County EMS had responded to in the previous six months.
Fayette County EMS Director Josh Vandever said four overdoses in a few weeks may not seem like a huge jump, but it’s enough for law enforcement in the county to start investigating it as a trend.
“Out here, it’s so few and far between,” Vandever said. “But just like to see it kind of multiple times in kind of the course of a couple of days or weeks is super irregular.”
Vandever also said over the last few weeks, hospital crews have been noticing the increase in overdoses coming through their doors.
Now the county wants to make sure residents know the severity of consequences from taking these unknown medications.
“It kind of hit our radar that kind of a lot of people are in this false sense of security that like, small town America, like this shouldn’t affect us here,” Vandever said.
They recommend never taking any medication that doesn’t come directly from a pharmacy or doctor.
“Taking like these, ‘party drugs’ and stuff like that, there has never been a more unsafe time in American history to do that with the amount of opioids that we’re seeing come into our country,” Vandever said.
Vandever said he’s not sure what to point to as the reason for the increase in overdoses in the county, other than the fact that it’s becoming an epidemic across the state.
“It was only a matter of time,” Vandever said. “As more and more of this stuff comes into our country and the more and more this stuff’s in circulation, it’s obviously going to get here sooner or later.”
But Vandever says even though fentanyl seems to be hitting the county, they are prepared to mitigate the overdoses. Every ambulance and law enforcement officer is stocked with Narcan, an overdose reversal medicine. They also have a group of mental health officers to make sure people are getting the help they need.
“There is good news in kind of being late to this getting here, is like the best practices are all kind of out there and we’re all kind of ready,” Vandever said.
Vandever also said their public school district has made sure that qualified medical professionals trained to handle overdoses are on many of their campuses.
The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office wasn’t able to reveal any specific details about this weekend’s overdoses as they are still under investigation, but said their narcotics unit is currently looking into several of these overdoses.