Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990                   TAG: 9003202782
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT                                 LENGTH: Short

4 RESCUE WORKERS TO BE HIRED TO HELP FRANKLIN RESPONSE TIME

Although the person lived several blocks from Franklin Memorial Hospital in Rocky Mount, dispatchers could not find an available ambulance.

There was no response from volunteers of the rescue squad assigned to the town and a backup ambulance operated by Carilion Health Care was out of the county.

"I would have sent a police car over there, except I didn't want to take the [legal] responsibility," Sheriff W.Q. "Quint" Overton recalled.

Finally, the dispatchers called in volunteers from Ferrum - 15 miles to the west - to answer a call less than a mile from the hospital.

The episode illustrated a critical weekday problem in the county's all-volunteer rescue system. Residents who call for help often have to wait 30 minutes or more because volunteers are tied up at jobs that often take them out of the county.

Monday, the Franklin County Board of Supervisors took the first step to reducing the response time of daytime rescue calls.

The board voted 4-3 late Monday to hire four paid rescue workers - two teams of two - to answer daytime calls. The rescue workers, whose salaries will total $90,000, could be on the job by late summer.

The motion authorized Emergency Services Coordinator David Laurrell to begin construction of a centralized fire and rescue building that could be completed in about a year.