Message from the Mayor: Our Ambulance Corps
Posted on: March 5, 2017 - 6:55pm
Fellow residents,
Over the years, I have highlighted each of the Hastings four independent volunteer fire companies and their unique history. (Those can be found here: Uniontown Hose Co., Protection Engine Co., Riverview Manor Hose Co., and the Hook & Ladder Co.) The youngest entity, and the final one I am covering, is the Ambulance Corps, a subsidiary organization of the Fire Department which draws its volunteers formally from all the other companies. It is the focus of today’s email and it seems especially fitting given that yesterday its members were recognized by the Department for a life saved last year.
The Corps was established in 1955 by 24 charter members (including William Gunther and Al Straub). The first ambulance was a repurposed Cadillac hearse painted red and housed behind the Hook and Ladder in an old horse barn. Even back then, three blasts on the Village horn summoned the ambulance. Training then was minimal (a Red Cross first aid course) and covered basics like how to make a splint or control bleeding, but the focus was mostly on what is known as "Load and Go" – getting the patient to the hospital quickly. Training now is substantially deeper, remains free, and leaves the volunteers confident that they can handle any emergency.
The current quarters were built in 1979 (on land leased for 99 years by the Village) through the contributions from the four fire companies. The Corps is staffed by 22 volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), of which 8-10 are especially active. There are another 14 who serve as certified drivers. The Ambulance Corps is composed equally of men and women, making it unique in the department.
The Corps is proud of its voluntary nature – it responded to 580 calls in 2016 (!!), with three volunteers on each call. We are only one of two communities in the Rivertowns that are purely volunteer. They are able to field a team to respond to 97% of all calls. A typical call (which is never a false alarm) typically takes 90 minutes from the alarm, to the pick-up, delivery of patient to the appropriate hospital, paperwork at the hospital, and return. Overnight, coverage is provided by assigned shifts, where three people are available to cover calls that come in. The unit has been led by the capable Captain Jenny Lee, supported by 1st Lt. Mitch Koch and 2nd Lt. Christine Connaughton.
Each department has stories and the Ambulance Corps’ service has generated many. Chief Drumm remembers the busiest mass casualty incident for the Corps, back in 1980, when a train wreck in Dobbs Ferry resulted in 20 injured people being ferried to local hospitals. The department recalls being staged to Shea Stadium on the day after 9/11 to respond to calls which, sadly, never came as there were no survivors. A long string of calls have varied from children with a range of objects up their noses, to newborn babies, the 16 Main Street fire in 2007, and the “railroad embankment power saw incident” which did not, somehow, involve a fatality or limb lost (though, frankly, I didn’t have the courage to ask for more detail).
More recently, Hastings resident Jeff Rappaport suffered a full cardiac arrest during a softball game at Zinsser Field. A doctor on the field began CPR, and the ambulance crew worked with a Greenburgh paramedic to resuscitate and stabilize him on the way to the hospital, resulting in a full recovery.
Several sacred texts have said that to save a life is as if you have saved the world. The Ambulance Corps, over the years, has saved many a world. When the horn blows thrice, remember that these brave volunteers are off to provide aid to a fellow resident – a child in convulsions, a woman with a back spasm, someone with a bad reaction to their prescription, a man with a heart attack, or, very possibly, one day, you.
Sincerely,
Peter Swiderski
Mayor