Crime & Safety

Volunteer Rescue Squads Push to Replace Paid EMTs on Saturdays

Volunteers want to sub for paid squad on weekends.

Tensions between the township's volunteer ambulance squads and its paid EMTs surfaced at Monday's when Councilman Michael dePierro made a motion for the volunteer squads to take over on Saturdays.

But he eventually dropped the motion when council members agreed that the dispatch policy should be changed so that the paid squads aren't immediately called first on Saturdays. The first call will go to whoever is in closest proximity, dePierro said.

"The volunteers give up time on their weekends when they could be doing something else, and the call never comes,'' dePierro said.

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In 2002, the township switched from volunteer to paid squads during the weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the volunteers were on call nights and weekends. But that was eventually switched to the paid squad working until 6 p.m. on Saturdays, too.

The switch to a paid squad, housed in the community center on Knoll Road, was necessary because there was a shortage of volunteers during working hours, particularly since there are more couples in the township where both spouses work, dePierro said.

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But he thinks that the town's two volunteer squads should have more opportunities to go out on weekend calls. "They put a lot of time and effort to give back to the public, they should have a chance to do that," he said.

Members of the township's two volunteer squads echoed some of his concerns and said they were  as competent as the paid EMTs and could cover the town just as well.

"I think the paid crew works very hard to over Saturdays. But there's a feeling that they're working hard to prove that there's a crisis and the volunteers can't do their job,''said  Rev. Donald Bragg, captain of the Rockaway Neck Squad.

Jennifer Thurkauf, a Parsippany Volunteer First Senior Lieutenant, said not only can volunteers cover the township, but they have back up in the form of squads from neighboring towns. "We have Montville and Boonton,'' she said.

Barberio hinted that the relationship between the volunteers and professional squads had developed into a rivalry that could be difficult to mediate. "If one side didn't like what the other one said, rumors started flying,'' he said.

Officials pointed out that the paid squad is funded mostly through insurance costs, so replacing them with volunteers wouldn't really save money.

According to Dean Snook, chief of Par-Troy EMS, which is paid, the township gets between 60 to 100 calls a a week.

Although there were complaints that both paid squads and volunteers were sometimes showing up at the same time, he said his dispatchers have worked to straighten that out.

But he agreed to sit down with officials and volunteers to discuss the new plan of calling volunteers first on Saturdays.


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