Here’s a somewhat chilling tale, one that’s easy to repeat on any given night.
One night, the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District must respond to an ambulance call. So far, so good. There’s no real problem. The district has the manpower. It has the equipment.
A second call comes in. Another ambulance goes. It’s still not a problem. Both medics scheduled for the day were on. Each medic responds to a call with one of two interns on duty.
This sets a dispatcher into motion trying to find another paramedic and driver to handle any third-out calls. In the meantime, both ambulances must transport their patients to Lebanon Community Hospital some 15 miles away. Those ambulances may not be able to respond to another call for an hour.
If there’s a third paramedic available, then there’s no problem staffing a third ambulance, possibly even a fourth.
Unfortunately, sometimes no off-duty medics are available. Neither are there any volunteer medics available. Lebanon Fire District goes on standby, and a pair of volunteer firefighters calls in as a quick response team, which will respond first to a call as Lebanon leaves Santiam Terrace to handle any third-out calls.
About the time the quick response team is ready and Lebanon is staged between Sweet Home and Lebanon, a third call comes in. Then there were none available.
This happened recently.
This can happen when paramedics are sick, on vacation or unavailable with a day off and out of town.
We can’t hold that against the off-duty paramedics. They’re on their days off. They should be able to enjoy them once in a while. At the same time, off-duty paramedics frequently respond. Volunteer medics on their day off from other fire departments also respond when needed.
As it is, they often end up working many of their days off; and they get tired.
So far, Sweet Home has handled the call loads commendably. Fire Chief Mike Beaver created an excellent plan to place a medic on call through the night to provide a third responder if needed.
The fire department has done all it can do to make sure calls are covered, but call loads increased by roughly 300 a couple years back, and they don’t seem to be slowing down.
To help address the need, the department included a new paramedic in last year’s budget. With a new district and the accompanying financial uncertainty, that position remained unfilled.
Fire department staff has asked the district board to fill that position by July 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year.
The board should find a way to do it as difficult as it may be financially. The board should be commended for its prudence with public dollars, but the time has come to add the new paramedic. The board’s position is unenviable. It still needs to build a substation in Cascadia to keep one of the promises made under the formation of the new district last year.
That solution may come in the form of an annexation effort by the district to incorporate an ambulance fee on the forestland it serves. That land was intentionally left out of the district because it already has state fire protection and would have technically been taxed twice to be included in the district.
The fire department still must provide ambulance service to those areas though and is exploring a legislative option to charge a tax based on ambulance service. That could provide upward of $50,000 a year and potentially fund a new position.