Pa. Agency Struggling to Recruit Volunteers

Dec. 22--FRACKVILLE -- Schuylkill County may be known for the volunteerism of its residents to many organizations, but it can still be a struggle to get enough volunteers, especially for emergency organizations such as ambulance associations and fire companies.

The Frackville Community Ambulance Association experiences that struggle in getting additional volunteers to keep its busy service available to answer emergency calls, according to association trustee Arthur D. Kaplan.

"The issue we're facing now is that we're on the hunt for volunteers," Kaplan said Friday in the ambulance garage office. "We do have some paid employees -- career-type folks such as EMTs (emergency medical technicians). We are a 'basic life support' association versus ALS (advanced life support) with paramedics."

Kaplan said the association has about 20 active volunteers who provide hours.

"We still have many volunteers who supply us with time," Kaplan said. "Besides our volunteer board, volunteer chief and assistant chief, the volunteers who run with the ambulance -- which is the case in what I would say about 90 percent of the ambulance associations. Because Shenandoah runs both BLS and ALS, they have a lot of paid personnel because of the way they run, though they still have volunteers. Ashland has volunteers, Mahanoy City has volunteers and so many others."

He said there are times when volunteers are not available to answer calls.

"All of us have periods of time where we just can't man the vehicles with volunteers, so we end up paying people for the time that they spend on the ambulance," Kaplan said. "We need more. That's the bottom line. We need more people who are community-minded who want to get out and help. And it's not just Frackville that we're seeing this decline in volunteerism."

Kaplan is very familiar in dealing with emergency situations of all types as the retired Schuylkill County emergency management coordinator after 23 years of service. In the first five years of his career, he was in charge of the county's communications system.

"I use a line from a guy down in the Lancaster-Harrisburg area, Greg Noll, who is an old friend of mine and a nationally- and internationally-known instructor," Kaplan said. "He always says that it's about 'Mrs. Smith. We're going out to help Mrs. Smith and she doesn't care whether you have a patch with Frackville or Shenandoah or Mahanoy City or Ashland or whoever. She wants help when she wants help. What can we do to help Mrs. Smith? In doing that, we need to get these vehicles out when there's an ambulance call. We used to say 'cradle-to-grave.' We need to go out when someone is having a baby and starting a new life, or if it's someone who is leaving this world to go to another world and everything in between. We need to address the concerns when people need emergency medical services."

Kaplan said the volunteer need also goes beyond riding with the ambulances.

"We're looking for volunteers. We need volunteers to do administrative work," Kaplan said. Sitting at a desk near Kaplan was trustee William "Bill" McLaren, 87, who spends many hours in the office.

"Bill does our day-to-day administrative work. He's here seven to eight hours a day, sometimes longer," Kaplan said. "Yesterday (Thursday), we had eight calls. We run on the interstate for crashes. We run in town and the Gilberton area. We do close to 1,000 calls on our vehicles. We need people who can help us administratively, but more than that we need people who will actually go on the ambulance."

Kaplan said that times have changed where people don't have as much time to get out to help.

"This is not anything new, whether you go to church, go to the synagogue, go the fire company, the Elks. Name an organization that doesn't have a problem with volunteerism today," Kaplan said. "And this is my opinion, we've become a society of less volunteer, community-minded people and we really need to come back to those values."

He added that regulations and legislation have increased so much that it affects volunteerism.

"The intent was for better care, but often times it leaves us without people to man the units," Kaplan said. "Twenty years ago, you could be a driver with just CPR training in a 16-hour course or something like that. Today, you have to have over 100 hours of training just to be the second person on the ambulance to drive it."

Kaplan said that the driving training was done in-house years ago, so it wasn't as time demanding as it is now going through formal training.

"You have to also take a first responder course," Kaplan said.

"They also raised the cost for EMTs for training from $100 to $600, plus you have to do that 140 to 150 hours of training," association Chief Dennis Marham said.

Kaplan said that it is important not to go back to the days of ambulance crews with much less training, who basically just placed a patient into a Cadillac-style ambulance and headed to the hospital.

"I'm not saying we shouldn't have trained people," Kaplan said, "but the other side of the coin is that too much regulation and too much legislation can lead us down the wrong path, as well. We have to come to a middle ground where we can have good, solid training, but we also have the ability for more volunteerism. That's really what it comes down to."

Even though McLaren may work at the desk most of the time, he does more when needed.

"I ended up driving yesterday (Dec. 19) because we lacked a driver for a call," McLaren said. "I took a course as a first responder so that I could do that on an emergency basis."

"My point here is that no matter what age you are and you think you're too old, you're not," Kaplan said. "Bill may be an exception at 87, but if you're at 60 years old and you think you can't do this, you can."

Kaplan said there is something that can be found for an interested person wanting to help.

"My point is that if you're a young or middle aged or retired person and you're looking for some way to give back to the community, here is a prime way to give back to the community," Kaplan said. "And it doesn't have to be a million hours a year. If you can give two hours a week, we'll take it. There are times that we just have to fill a spot. We have a paid EMT on now because we couldn't fill this with volunteer time, but we still need that driver. If we can fill that slot for four hours, that's four hours less that we need to find somebody else to do it. It can be small chunks of time. We have people from every walk of life -- doctors, lawyers, priests, nurses and retired people. We're really in a bind filling those slots."

Kaplan said many people who want to become volunteers can just ask to become part of the association. He said after becoming familiar with how everything operates, a person could decide what they would like to do, be it administrative, maintenance or becoming a first responder.

To learn more about volunteering with the Frackville ambulance, call 570-874-2955, or call the local ambulance association in your community.

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