Thank you
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As a general statement not to anyone in particular but regarding the fire service/EMS relationship.
There is a lot of overlap between fire and EMS. In my area were are serviced by a private EMS organization that is an ALS provider. ALS is “Advanced Life Support” meaning they have paramedics on-board as opposed to BLS “Basic Life Support” using only EMTs.
When there is a critical life medical emergency as in a cardiac event and EMS is 15-20 minutes out, the county 911 will dispatch fire knowing that they have a number of EMTs that can quickly respond and that can and does make a difference. This is called an EMS Assist, this is the only time we as fire we respond directly to a scene.
We will usually get more appreciation for our efforts for a 15 minute EMS assist than a 4 hour dwelling fire or 2 hour MVA. Good thing we do this for ourselves because if it were for customer appreciation no one would volunteer.
And that brings me to another topic. When asked why we do this volunteering by politicians or the media we tend to say we are “giving back” to the community. This is complete BS. Speaking for myself and many others, I do this because I personally love to do it. There is tremendous satisfaction in arriving at a scene of total pandemonium and restoring order, even if there is much loss in property or lives. The minute it stops being fun I quit.