Ambulance Has A Busy Day

By Steve Bigham

The Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps broke a record for emergency calls in a 24-hour period this week when it responded to 18 calls between about 6 pm on Tuesday and 6 pm on Wednesday.

“It was the busiest day in the history of the ambulance corps,” noted Chief Kristin Peterson.

The action started at 5:57 pm on Tuesday when EMTs Aubin, Lerman, and Wall responded to a medical call. A second call followed at 6:02 pm with a third one coming in at 6:48 pm. Calls continued to come in up until 11 pm. The exhausted crew finally got a chance to catch some sleep at the ambulance garage on Main Street. However, 90 minutes into their sleep, two more calls went out.

 At 2:30 am on Wednesday, the tired crew arrived back at the garage where they fell into their beds, hoping things would settle down. But at 4:45 am it was back on the road again, this time to another medical call. Still another medical call came in at 6:16 am.

Upon returning from that call, EMT Aubin responded with daytime crew members Peterson and Hugo to a medical call.

Then, between 9:45 am and 12:15 pm, the ambulance crew responded to six more calls, including motor vehicle accidents. During this time, all three Newtown ambulances were up and running.

The crew finally returned home in the early afternoon where they got a chance eat lunch. But it wasn’t long before they were responding to yet another call. Other crew members chipping in on the busiest day were EMTs Schettino, McLachlan, Cain, and Belair.

It was another day in the life of the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

Fortunately, the corps is now made up of more than 60 members, who donate a significant amount of time to help others.

 According to Chief Peterson, the ambulance corps responded to 849 calls from January through July of 2000 and the numbers could exceed that during the second half of the year. It is on pace to hit 1,700 calls for the year, which would far surpass 1999’s record year of 1,506. The continued growth of the community has played a role (after Danbury, Newtown has the highest volume of emergency calls in the region), but the largest reasons for the increase has been added calls to Lockwood Lodge/Ashlar of Newtown and Cornerstone of Eagle Hill. Those facilities had been served by Danbury Ambulance in the past.

The ambulance corps is on pace to put in a total of 17,000 volunteer-hours at the garage this year waiting for calls. Another 5,000 hours will be spent on-call.

Newtown’s EMTs have a lot of road to cover. At 60 square miles, Newtown is the second largest town in the state. It has 400 miles of incorporated roads and a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 84 within its borders.

Because Newtown is so big, the corps uses the first response system when an emergency call comes in. This system cuts down on response time.

As a 911 call comes in, the dispatcher alerts the volunteer corps by activating pagers, which are carried by all licensed members.

Simultaneously, a computer at the dispatch center lists the three closest EMTs to the scene who are accessible by an automated dialer. Those EMTs then respond directly to the scene, while others go directly to the ambulance garage on South Main Street to retrieve the ambulance.