Star Tribune
Killing of Burnsville first responder an extreme example of growing dangers for Minnesota’s paramedics
The fatal shooting of a Burnsville firefighter while he was tending to a fallen police officer is an extreme example of what Minnesota first-responders describe as an increasingly dangerous profession.
Deaths in the line of duty remain rare, and occur mostly when ambulances crash or medics are hit on roadsides by cars. But state and federal data both point to more injuries as emergency medical technicians and paramedics encounter violence. Forty Minnesota medics suffered violence-related injuries in 2021 and 2022 that were so severe that they missed work or were transferred or had their duties restricted, according to the most recent federal data.
Medics are trained to wait until police officers secure crime scenes and then move in to treat injuries, but seemingly stable scenes can turn dangerous quickly, said Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, a volunteer first-responder for the Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department. “Sometimes I am on a scene and I can feel things shift, I can feel things change. Maybe something that was safe before becomes unsafe. It’s hard when it happens.”
A 2022 survey of medics represented by the Hennepin County Association of Paramedics and EMTs in Minneapolis found that 87% reported being affected by violence at work and 78% were assaulted by patients or bystanders on the job. Leaders of the union declined further comment while “full details are unknown and it is important to allow Burnsville and the families involved time to process the situation.”
Medics across the world are “heartbroken” by the shooting, said Dylan Ferguson, director of Minnesota’s Medical Services Regulatory Board, which oversees licensing of the state’s first responders. “Today and in the days to come, the entire Minnesota EMS community stands shoulder to shoulder with the City of Burnsville during this difficult time as we honor the bravery and selflessness of these fallen heroes.”
Veteran firefighter Adam Finseth was killed after a standoff in Burnsville early Sunday morning between police and a man who had barricaded himself in the house with a woman and several children. Finseth was caring for a wounded officer when he came under fire himself. In addition to Finseth, two police officers died and a third was wounded by gunfire.
Finseth was trained as a tactical paramedic, allowing him to embed with SWAT teams and go with them directly to higher-risk crime scenes so he could respond immediately if injuries occurred. His death might be the nation’s first in the 52 years in which these specially trained medics have existed, said Jim Etzin, a Michigan-based consultant who ran a professional tactical EMS association.
“I cannot recall someone whose primary duty or responsibility was to be a medic or a physician on a SWAT team to be killed in the performance of their duties,” he said.
Whether such a tragedy will drive more people away from Minnesota’s EMS systems is unclear, but the state is already running short of medics — especially in rural parts of the state that are seeing longer wait times in response to their 911 calls for help.
Seeburger co-led a legislative task force that recently toured Minnesota to learn about the EMS shortage and why it is happening. She said most medics are aware from the start that they will be working in stressful and potentially violent situations, and that this risk wasn’t cited much as a reason for the growing shortage. Medics routinely receive updated training on assessing “scene safety” in order to maintain their licensure.
However, Seeburger said she suspects that violent incidents are contributing to the stress and burnout that many medics did cite for their decisions to give up working or volunteering in their local fire departments.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
