CINCINNATI — If you see someone in a navy uniform and a bright red helmet riding a bicycle down the streets of Cincinnati, it may mean help is on the way.
Cincinnati's bike team helps manage major events that draw large crowds, including this past weekend's Savannah Banana games and the FIFA Club World Cup match at TQL Stadium. Those were two of the weekend's three major events, along with the 'No Kings' protests that happened across areas of the city.
I got to meet two of CFD's newest bike team members, paramedics Branden Barnes and Bradley Eberhart. The two explained that patrolling on a bike helps handle crowds sometimes better than large trucks can.
Watch to see how CFD's bike team is an extra layer of safety for the city:
"If you have a large crowd of people, naturally it's going to be very difficult to fit those vehicles in there, right? So this makes us very much more mobile," Barnes said.
The two paramedics spent their day handling crowds of people around TQL Stadium before making their way down to the banks later in the afternoon.
While a bicycle may not be as big as an ambulance or a fire truck, the paramedics showed me that they still have the tools they need to save lives.
"This is the first half of our cardiac monitor. This is a defibrillator and pacer," Eberhart said as he showed off the tools attached to his bike.
Ahead of the major events over the weekend, the City of Cincinnati announced it had activated its Emergency Operations Center.
I sat down with CFD Assistant Chief Matt Flagler to ask him about what that activation meant ahead of the congested crowds across the city from Thursday to Sunday.
"When we open the operations center, we're just really taking all the planning that we do year-round and we put it into a centralized location," Flagler said.
The fire chief told me about 250 extra CFD, CPD, and other public service workers were on staff to manage the crowds and keep people safe at each location this past weekend.
Local first responders worked alongside state and federal crews to maximize safety efforts, ensuring people could enjoy the major sporting events as well as peacefully protest.
"We did have some security concerns around the protest because of what we saw in other communities. However, we know our citizens and we love our protesters really. They are excellent people that just want us to understand their perspective, so we were confident that that was going to be a safe event, but we wanted to make sure," Flagler said.
The first day of summer is less than a week away, which means more events and crowds to look forward to and plan for.
"I know that we have a city team that's super invested in having great events and welcoming people into the community. We put a lot of energy into that effort and I hope it showed in how many people came into downtown and had fun this weekend," Flagler said.
Members of the bike team will be seen cruising around the city limits whenever they need to be called on.
"Our primary goal on these bikes is EMS, but whatever they call us for is where we'll go," Eberhart said.
