ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604150111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FINCASTLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on April 16, 1996.
A graphic in Sunday's newspaper gave an incorrect figure for the
total number of calls the Blue Ridge Rescue Squad ran in 1994. The squad
ran 520 calls that year and 367 in 1995.
AS BOTETOURT COUNTY'S emergency crews ask for more volunteers, many residents wonder if it's not time to hire a full-time staff.
Botetourt County Administrator Jerry Burgess calls the timing and circumstances "incredible," if not "misleading."
On the day 13,200 recruiting brochures from the county's all-volunteer squads began pouring through the post office, news stories documented how it took 21 minutes for an ambulance to reach 14-year-old Justin Wilburn, who had collapsed at Lord Botetourt High School and died.
The call went out to the Troutville Rescue Squad; it was tied up at a Roanoke hospital, so the call rolled over to the Fincastle squad. Other rescue workers who happened to be in the area were on the scene in about 10 minutes.
Wilburn had little chance of surviving. Five school faculty members started cardiopulmonary resuscitation within minutes, but the boy apparently had a heart problem.
Coupled with the recruiting campaign, though, the event raised concerns about whether Botetourt County's devoted but dwindling all-volunteer rescue squads can stay ahead of the county's explosive industrial and residential growth.
Troutville Mayor Jewell Tyndall already had heard from residents concerned about whether the squad responds fast enough. When the Lord Botetourt incident occurred, she heard from a few more.
"Someone was ill in the family, and they were concerned that someone could not respond if something happened to them," Tyndall said. She and some others think it may be time to consider getting the volunteers some paid help.
"The calls are getting covered," said Gary Franklin, president of the Botetourt County Association of Rescue Squads and a member of the Blue Ridge crew. "We just want to exhaust every option with keeping a volunteer system. already have."
Botetourt's volunteers are well-trained, with several people trained in advanced life support in every crew hall, Franklin said. The problem is in the numbers.
The number of rescue squad volunteers has not grown in recent years, while Botetourt's population has. There have been nearly 600 housing starts since January 1994, and 14 new industries with more than 1,500 new jobs have moved to the county since 1993.
"The people at the rescue squad were fantastic that day. They did everything they could," Lord Botetourt Principal Jim Sledd said. "But Botetourt is growing, and I feel like the citizens deserve the best emergency services."
Burgess says the county is devoted to keeping a volunteer system as long as possible, because it has served the county well, it's cost effective, and the volunteers love what they do.
As Eagle Rock Squad Capt. Mike Reid puts it, paid personnel are great, but he believes volunteers give better "caring care."
The question is, how long can the volunteers keep it up? `How much longer?'
Penny Firestone, Troutville squad captain, wants to take the negative publicity about what happened at Lord Botetourt and turn it into a positive. She says the incident illustrates what the volunteers are up against, especially in her squad.
"To us it's serious. It's very serious. The public feels like we're doing an outstanding job, but they don't know how much longer we can keep on."
The situation is not desperate. In most parts of the county, rescue squads are running just over one call a day on average. The number of calls countywide actually fell slightly from 1994 to 1995.
But in the southern end of Botetourt, along Interstate 81 and where most of the new development has taken place, residents are feeling the county's growing pains more acutely.
The Troutville squad ran more calls than any other squad in 1995, nearly half the countywide total. Yet it has just 16 active members - the fewest of any squad in Botetourt.
The Blue Ridge Rescue Squad, with 23 active members, had 367 calls in 1995. The 20-member Fincastle squad ran 445 calls.
At 861 in 1995, Troutville's call volume was up nearly 100 calls from the year before, and up almost 200 since 1991.
Factor in that only one crew member may be available and that it takes an average two hours to run a call. What if one of those additional 200 calls comes right after the first one of the day?
While the Troutville squad had one ambulance at a Roanoke hospital and couldn't respond to Lord Botetourt that day, two other ambulances sat in the crew hall with no one to use them.
The shortages typically happen during the day, when most volunteers are at their jobs. The Botetourt squads are on general alert then: Whoever is available runs the call. If no one responds in four minutes, the call goes to another squad.
In the evening, teams of four or five members are on call, so there's less of a problem. In the last half of 1995, evening response times were an average of 2 1/2 minutes faster than daylight times.
Troutville has taken other measures, such as cutting out all nonemergency transports.
"What if we're taking grandma to Friendship Manor and an emergency happens?'' Firestone asked.
Elsewhere in the county, the shortages are less serious.
"If we get a crew out in the daytime, the odds are we won't have another crew," said Wilson Webb, Fincastle squad captain. "But the odds of us having two calls in a day are really slim."
The concern in Fincastle and Blue Ridge is that the same people are running all the calls. Webb said it's hard to staff for one call a day.
More volunteers would help take the burden off the current volunteers, the rescue squad association's Franklin said.
"The more people we've got, the less people have to get up in the middle of the night and go run." It's a family affair
The rescue squad association started organizing its recruiting drive a year ago.
It applied for a grant from the state Office of Emergency Medical Services, which produced $5,000. The county kicked in a few more dollars for the campaign, which includes the brochure and print, television and radio ads.
Franklin said the drive didn't grow out of any dire need for help or a scientific study, but from a sense that the volume of calls was increasing while no new volunteers were coming in.
Franklin joined the Blue Ridge squad 10 years ago.
"The people involved then are still the ones involved now," he said. "You don't find as many younger people coming in."
The same is true all over. One core group of people, often with family ties, sustains a squad.
Penny Firestone is a career firefighter in Salem. Her husband, David, is a dispatcher for the county and a volunteer. Her mother, Ruby Taylor, ran more than 700 calls last year as a driver.
Eagle Rock Capt. Mike Reid is a firefighter and squad member. His father was a founding member of the Eagle Rock Fire Department.
The Fincastle crew is dominated by six married couples, including Capt. Wilson Webb and his wife.
The squads just need new blood.
Paradoxically, the need for volunteers is greatest in the southern part of the county, where the population - and presumably the volunteer pool - is growing by leaps and bounds.
The prevailing theory is that the newest residents of the county are moving in from areas with paid squads, such as Roanoke. They just don't realize the squads are volunteer.
"I hope it's been the lack of education, the lack of going out and getting these people," Penny Firestone said.
County Administrator Burgess thinks another deterrent for potential volunteers is the training requirement. It takes 110 hours to achieve Emergency Medical Technician status - a prerequisite for some squads. Add another 87 hours to become a shock trauma technician, and 141.5 more to become a cardiac technician.
Money, however, is not a problem.
In 1991, the county budgeted $133,000 for the rescue squads. The proposed 1996-97 budget contains twice that much. Burgess says that reflects the county's commitment to the volunteers.
The county is also beefing up its communication system and providing the squads new radios in hopes of improving service and helping keep the volunteer system.
Burgess concedes, though, that the volunteers won't be around forever.
Valley District Supervisor Bill Loope, in whose district the Troutville squad operates, is prepared for paid help to come around sooner rather than later.
"Let's see how the grant works," he said. "I would like to think it's going to work. But I know that in the future, we're going to have to go to a paid staff of some sort. Up to this point, the volunteers have been able to work fine. It's just hard to keep up with the growth."
Adding paid help to volunteer squads presents its own set of problems.
In Roanoke County, where squads are made up of paid and volunteer help, friction between the two groups is commonplace.
Eagle Rock's Reid, who has volunteered in Roanoke County, said if paid help is implemented, it will have to be handled carefully.
"You don't hire from within the ranks of volunteers," he said. "And you have to lay down some guidelines. The paid people are there to supplement the volunteers, not be the boss.''
People interested in volunteering for one of the Botetourt rescue squads may call 473-8220.
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ROGER HART/Staff Capt. Penny Firestone of Troutvilleby CNBVolunteer Rescue Squad says her unit has more equipment than
manpower.
2. chart - Botetourt Rescue color STAFF
3. chart - Rescue Training Requirements STAFF