An Open Letter to the Members of the Lebanon Fire and Rescue Departments,
To Whom it May Concern;
Since I'm personally being called out on the call for a broken arm after 4 in the morning, I thought I would speak to all of you Volunteers in the Town of Lebanon and do it publicly.
While I am a STRONG supporter of our current Fire and Rescue Departments, I too was disappointed when I logged on at 10 this morning to the ridicule of the "other" pages, who name me personally, and somehow find me responsible for the entire Fire and EMS Department.
For a moment, I even felt personally let down.
How could I fight so hard to have people believe they are safe and covered by our Fire and Rescue Departments and then have you folks not wake up and answer a call for a driver to transport someone to the hospital??
What would have happened if this were a heart attack, or a stroke, or someone was having seizures, or bleeding badly, or had been shot??
But then I got my second wind. I finished my cup of coffee and woke up!!
I'm not going to let the reports of a disgruntled group of 15 unnamed people drag me down!!!
OR our Fire and Rescue Departments either!!
No, I'm sure not!!
That particular scenario is EXACTLY why we have Mutual Aid.
First, I want to apologize to whichever of our EMTs is Basic 21. YOU were magnificent!! You got up out of your bed and went to that call and stayed with your patient no matter how frustrated or tired you were! You did the RIGHT thing by calling for a Fire Department Driver to come drive that ambulance, and then you asked for a Mutual Aid ambulance to come and transport. I'm sorry that I let the "other" pages put me in doubt of you for even a moment!!
Nowhere on the "other" pages does it talk about what you were doing during that time you were at the patient's side. I'm SURE you assessed the situation, kept the patient calm, and took care to stabilize the arm. I'm SURE you realized within minutes that this was not a life threatening problem, because if it had been, I'm also SURE you would have called for paramedics from Sanford rather than waiting for Milton's Mutual Aid.
HAD you called for Sanford, at a cost to the town of $2,000.00, I'm also SURE you would have been berated publicly and smeared all over the Facebook world on the pages of the 15 unnamed volunteers.
The people of this town have put you in a very bad situation, Basic 21. While you sit and wait, continue to check vital signs and monitor your patient, you must have been having your doubts about waiting. You must have realized, while you were in a stranger's home at some ungodly hour of the morning that your fellow Rescue Volunteers were fast asleep in their beds and the decisions were yours and yours alone.
Do you call for Mutual Aid and wait?? Or do you call for Sanford and hear the flack about a $2,000 charge for Sanford's services??
I personally think you made the RIGHT call.
KUDOS to you for your decision making in the light of all you knew you'd be reading this morning!!
Now let's address the OTHER Volunteers, the ones who did NOT respond.
I wonder how many people in town realize what you did, as a Volunteer Group, yesterday??
You didn't walk into ONE fire, you walked into THREE. You took care of the people in our own town, and responded to TWO Mutual Aid fires.
I know people in Lebanon have a LOT to be thankful for. For as much as they complain, point fingers, and call names, not ONE of them would go and do the same thing. If they would, they'd have paid for the certification classes and have been there!
But YOU were there!! THEY were not.
So the "other" pages have reported that you're being PAID for your Volunteer work, but do the folks of Lebanon know how MUCH you're being paid? I didn't. Not until this morning when one of our Volunteer folks told me that you get $3.50 PER CALL to work sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 2 hours, or sometimes 5 hours putting out a fire.
Our Rescue gets $4.35 PER CALL to go and sit with someone at 1 in the morning, 2 in the morning, or 10 in the morning.
Which one of the finger pointers would do that?? Which person calling you names would go, at that time of the morning to go and pull someone out of a car wreck, stop their bleeding, step into a home with protective dogs to give orange juice to a Diabetic in distress, or even sit with a woman in pain from a broken arm?
So, I'm figuring this all out in my head.
And NO, I'm not the best mathematician.
You folks worked on a VERY HIGH Fire Danger Day and put out 3 Fires. I also believe there was a Rescue call or two in there as well.
Since the State of Maine does not require that businesses pay their employees when they are on a Volunteer Department and have to leave work for the day, I figure most of you lost a day's pay. And in return for that loss of paycheck, you each made about $10 for the day from the Town of Lebanon as Volunteers on either Fire or Rescue Departments (and some of you are on both).
Working all day, fighting fires, in 80* temperatures must be exhausting.
Were any one of you capable of driving without the impairment of being overtired at this point??
Impaired driving puts a patient, sometimes, at more risk than waiting for an ambulance to come for a broken arm. In some states it is actually illegal to drive when you're overtired. And driving with a CDL license is monitored via log books to be sure the drivers aren't overtired.
So, did you all do the right thing by staying home and getting some sleep?
Maybe.
Considering that today is another VERY HIGH FIRE DANGER day in the State of Maine, and there is the possibility that the next three days after that are VERY HIGH FIRE DANGER days.
If you were unable to drive and drive safely, you did the RIGHT thing!!
Don't let one missed call get you down!!
You keep on doing what you do!
I, for one, am VERY proud of the things that you do!!
ROCK ON Lebanon Fire and Rescue Departments.
Sincerely,
Deborah Dorey Wilson
