Many of the issues that have been expressed by residents and fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) volunteers were reiterated at an August 26 town hall meeting held by the Virginia Department of Fire Programs.
Department of Fire Programs Government Affairs Manager Spencer Willet said the five-man team visited the county on behalf of the board of supervisors, which requested a study be done earlier this year.
“The purpose of us being here this evening is a public hearing, so we are not necessarily here to answer questions on what we’re seeing other than if you have questions about what the study process is. We’re
here to hear from you and what your concerns for fire and EMS are here in Patrick County,” he said.
Willet said the town hall meeting concluded the first day of a three-day stint in the county, with the group meeting with each of the county’s fire and EMS agencies, county administrator, EMS coordinator, and other key players.
At the end of the three-days, Willet said the group might solicit more information from the county or some of its organizations to produce a report that will probably be made public in early March.
“Once that’s done, the study team will convene, compile notes. The report will be sent back to the county for technical edits only. They will get a copy of the report just to make sure we spelled every department’s names right, but they will not be able to change any of the recommendations at that point,” he said.
Once the technical edits are complete, he said the report would go to the Fire Board for consideration – and most likely at the end of February 2025 would be approved. Once it is approved, it becomes a public document.
“So, whether the county, or an individual organization, or whoever doesn’t like it or does like it, it’s going to be on the state website. It’ll be a record that we keep and will be available to anybody,” he said.
Mike Fulk, captain of the Ararat Volunteer Rescue Squad, said the biggest concerns are money, recruitment, and retention.
“I think everybody here will probably agree with that. My opinion, the second or the third thing probably would be training, and getting money for the squads and fire departments. In a lot of cases here in this county, the people that are actually volunteers, a lot of them are aging out, so that’s a big, big issue,” he said.
On the volunteer side, Fulk said it’s hard when a squad gets a young person interested and gets qualified and then go and work for a paid service.
“Not taking anything away from our paid service, but after they work 40 hours or whatever for a paid service, then they’re not going to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and run a volunteer call. That’s the problem we have in remote areas,” he said.
Crystal Harris, of the Smith River Volunteer Rescue Squad, said she got paid for her job to fill her tummy, but volunteering filled her heart.
“However, it’s a different world now. The young people aren’t allowed to leave work. If we could get the few people that we do have jobs to let them leave and not be abused, it would help. It’s the communication between places like that” that adds to the issue, she said.
Harris said that while all of the squads are territorial in wanting to take care of their areas, “it’s come to a point where there is not any boundaries where we have to cross. Now we need to go where is needed to be,” she said.
Harris also agreed with Fulk that recruitment is an issue, and believes there needs to be a mass county-wide recruitment campaign.
“Signs don’t do. It’s going to have to be some type of major event on recruitment to try and get some young people in. I need to be out the door, but I still try and go occasionally,” she said.
Smith River Captain Debbie Foley said she works every day and is unable to leave work during the day to run a call.
“I can only do so much, and that’s what most everybody does, so, you know, it’s hard to get out there. I like to volunteer, and I give a lot more of my time, but I can only give but so much. There’s stuff that I have got to do to take care of myself,” she said.
While she doesn’t know about the other volunteer squads, Foley said she’s happy Willet and his colleagues are in the county. She also believes their report needs to be taken to heart by the county administration and the board of supervisors.
“It will be helpful to us, but it’s got to come from them. We can only do but so much, and our paid service is drowning. Jeb (Stuart Volunteer Rescue Squad) is not coming back, and if they do, we don’t need to give them money, but that’s my opinion. We need help, but it’s got to start from the top,” she said.
Patrick Springs Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Clint Weidhaas said he hopes the visiting panel sheds a different light because sometimes it’s hard for the squads in their bubble to get past their pride.
“In my opinion, the district lines need to disappear, especially on the EMS side. If we had a multi-car accident tomorrow with five injuries, someone may die because we can’t get personnel there,” he said, and noted that some incidents have already come close to that happening.
“We have a problem here – we can’t get the trucks out the door, bottom line. When we were fighting to get a paid service in this county, it was awful, we barely got one. I sat at the board of supervisor’s meetings in disbelief because we got our own citizens who we signed up for as a volunteer to provide assistance to, but then we let our own pride get in the way of providing true service,” he said.
Weidhaas said if the county’s going to have to come up with money, it’s going to have to take it away from someone and start putting it into Station 8 and some of the volunteer squads.
“But we need to fix the problem pronto, because we’re going countywide every day,” he said.
Weidhaas said the Patrick Springs squad is planning to start a first responder program because of the worry that someone will get injured while calls for medical assistance are going countywide.
“There’s been problems in the past with pride being set aside. If you got to put more paid trucks on and the volunteers try to do what they need to do, then that’s what has to happen,” he said, adding that he hopes the insight “kind of shows that, because sometimes it’s hard to get over pride,” he said.
Galen Gilbert, of the Jeb Stuart squad, said another issue facing the squads is the cost of equipment.
“It’s getting to be staggering. You all know what a new fire trucks going to cost, or what a new ambulance is going to cost, and you can’t sell enough hotdogs to do that. Back in the day, it pretty much kept things afloat, but you can’t sell that many hotdogs,” he said.
Those in attendance also spoke about how the meeting was not readily made known to the community, how they believe the board of supervisors lacks knowledge and understanding of the situation, and asked questions about how the process and reports were done in other localities, and what will happen when it’s finished.
