Lori Graham
Contributing Writer
A shortage of emergency service volunteers, the closing of the Shawsville Fire and Rescue, and an increase of paid positions for emergency services were some of the topics at a Montgomery County Board of Supervisors special meeting on Aug. 23.
“One of the areas that the County staff started being concerned about a couple of years ago; the decline in volunteerism and the decline in some of the rescue agencies’ ability to run calls,” County Administrator Craig Meadows said.
Meadows said a noticeable decline in volunteerism is happening not only in Montgomery County but in other places across the state.
Michael Geary, Emergency Services Coordinator, provided a synopsis of where the EMS county system presently is in their staffing.
“Craig and I had a meeting very shortly after I started, and I said this is an issue that we need to look into,” Geary said. “Pretty quickly after we started providing coverage in the Shawsville and Elliston area, there was a particular call that the volunteers weren’t able to answer and unfortunately resulted in a fatality and we recognized that the volunteers just didn’t have enough staff to cover the nighttime down there either.”
Geary said, thanks to funds approved by the Supervisors, they were able to put together more staff to cover the Shawsville and Elliston area.
“Riner still does have a good core group of volunteers that still staff trucks at night,” Geary said.
Also, in April, additional funds approved by the Supervisors allowed for some positions to ensure the Riner area would be supported by paramedics if necessary.
Supervisor Sara Bohn reiterated the difficulty in finding volunteers as someone that has worked in non-profit community support programs.
“What the County has done well is the RSVP program,” said Bohn. “It has paid staff, but I understand it’s also funded differently. Was there ever any discussion about having paid staff help with the volunteer?”
Meadows said, “That was the intent of what we were doing is to make sure we had paid first responders so that in situations where the volunteers weren’t able to be available for calls, we could provide coverage.”
Chair Sherri Blevins added another reason that Christiansburg EMS struggled to keep up with calls that were pulling them to the Shawsville area while still being responsible for emergency services in the town of Christiansburg.
“It became a ripple effect that other outside agencies would cover Christiansburg while Christiansburg is covering Shawsville,” Blevins said. “Basically, we were told in some meetings that they couldn’t sustain that, and it would come to a point that they may have to stop that because the burden was too great on them, and that was another considering factor when I was involved in those discussions.”
Supervisor Steve Fijalkowski has met with the former Shawsville rescue team on two separate occasions in the past and stated this has been an ongoing problem for some time in the county.
“Things have been tough for a long time and everything that’s been said so far is absolutely true,” Fijalkowski said. “You can’t put the burden on the bigger squads just because they’re bigger.”
Supervisor Todd King wished to pose a question to the Supervisors and EMS administration during the meeting.
“Is any other department having trouble running their calls?” King said.
Assistant County Administrator Bradley St. Clair responded to King’s question that his office could provide the data necessary to the board to answer the question, but the Supervisors should make that decision.
“I don’t think that my opinion or Michael’s opinion should be interjected into that,” St. Clair said. “Ultimately, it is the board’s, I feel like it’s the board’s responsibility to look at the call data, to look at the response data, the times, the number of staff and decide is this adequate or is it not.”
Meadows agreed with St. Clair in his response to King. However, Bohn emphasized that the Supervisors depend on expert interpretation of data.
“There is not a doubt in my mind that we don’t have, or are working towards, the same goal,” Blevins said. “That is to protect our citizens, provide the best service at the quickest response.”
Vice Chair Mary Biggs asked how calls are picked up by different agencies within the county and how effectively volunteers are integrating and interacting with paid first responders.
Geary and St. Clair both responded that the type of call is very dependent on the truck or team that is sent to the scene.
“EMS services can be very territorial,” St. Clair said. “Fortunately, at the end of the day, for the most part everybody says okay, we may have had a disagreement, let’s take care of the patient, let’s take care of whatever and we sort it out afterwards.”
Meadows emphasized the need to “supplement the volunteers”, speaking to the County’s Supervisors, administration staff, and EMS coordinators tasked with working together to answer the call for emergency services.
Another big question during the special meeting that warranted much discussion is whether each agency has similar or standard operating procedures.
Forest Redd, Deputy Chief of the Christiansburg Fire Department, said, “The response times, we have a standard of five minutes. They ask who’s coming and if you need a second dude.”
In response to Blevin’s questions about the standard procedures as to who would be in charge of a crew or the scene when responding to an emergency.
“Usually, whoever is the highest-ranking officer on scene is who’s in charge,” Redd said. “Christiansburg has call nights, so like, one night it might be a captain or lieutenant, that’s who’s in charge of that scene.”
In mutual aid situations, if for example, Blacksburg squad would respond to an emergency event in Christiansburg, then the Blacksburg squad would stay in charge of the scene until the Christiansburg squad was up to speed, according to Redd.
If multiple jurisdictions are needed to respond to a larger emergency event, then the primary jurisdiction will be in charge of the scene, according to Dave English, Chief of Blacksburg Rescue.
Mike King, Riner Fire Department Volunteer, expressed some dissatisfaction on communication from the volunteer’s perspective.
“We’re going to continue to run calls until y’all tell us we can’t anymore, but ya know it helps out, because there is a lot of people getting discouraged,” King said.
The Board of Supervisors agreed that an increased method of communication to the volunteer members would help with decreasing misunderstandings within the EMS agencies.
