First Responders Feud With Ambulance Service in W.Va.

Jan. 24--Could tension between two local groups be costing southern Raleigh County residents access to first-aid and other possibly life-saving services?

At Tuesday's Raleigh County Commission meeting, Robert Bays, leader of Coal City First Responders, said Best Ambulance has put his group on a limited-call basis. First-responders are volunteers trained to apply first-aid and stabilize or help someone until an ambulance arrives.

He said Best filed a complaint about the first responders with the 911 Center in November, but he never learned of it until mid-January.

"The complaint has been to the point that (Best has) threatened to pull out of Coal City if we were allowed to continue running the EMS."

Bays also complained that his group was left out of a Nov. 21 meeting Best had with Raleigh County Medical Director Margaret Staggers.

"All of this was brought up at the medical director meeting and they actually closed our program that night.

"If it wouldn't have been for The Register-Herald and Fox 59 calling the EOC and wondering why the program was closed, they probably wouldn't have put us back on a limited basis."

The owner of Best Ambulance Service in Beckley, Coal City and Grandview says it wasn't her company who put Coal City on a limited-response basis.

"What the 911 Center is doing is actually following national standards on dispatching a first-responder unit," Connie Hall said. "The boys at Coal City want to be dispatched on everything. They do it without regard for public safety.

"We filed a complaint with 911 Center. We share the same medical director, Margaret Staggers. The medical director said, 'Let's go on national standards.' National standards are set so that first responders are there to assist the ambulance as needed. They're not there to take the place of the ambulance."

Bays says an issue with vehicles passing initiated the complaint.

"The complaint they filed was that we refused right-of-way and wouldn't move over," he said. "There was no room where we were in Fireco."

Hall says that was just one of the times that the two have butted heads.

"What happened was they got in front of one of my ambulances that had been toned by the 911 center," she said. "They refused to yield the right-of-way to my ambulance and that happened on two separate occasions. We are talking paramedic ambulances compared to firemen with basic knowledge of first-aid.

"The 911 center tones us to go to something and they go run and jump in their truck and take off. My ambulance takes off to go to the call. They refuse to move out of the way."

Bays says the issue is the result of some bad blood between Coal City and Best Ambulance from years ago.

"This all boils down to, eight years ago, Coal City Fire Department tried to open their own ambulance service," he said. "It was before I was there. There's some hurt feelings there. I thought everything was behind us, but evidently not.

"We don't want to hurt the people of our area. We want the first-responder program to work in Coal City so that we can get it to work anywhere."

Hall disagrees with Bays about the root of the issue between the groups. In her opinion, it is that the first-responders show up to everything and get in the way.

"They blocked my ambulances in on one scene," she said. "We had a pediatric patient who wasn't breathing. It was our company and Jan-Care that was there. The fire department blocked both of our ambulances in and refused to leave us alone so we could take care of the child.

"If we need help and we don't have anyone in the area, 911 will tone them (Bays' first responders). As long as we're sitting right there, there's no reason for them to be running with us. If we need their help, we'll call."

Bays says the reason they were responding to every call was so that the people in the first-responder program could get some good training.

"We're only doing this to help the citizens," he said. "We were being dispatched to all calls in our area, even if an ambulance was next door. The reason why is that it was great on-the-job training for my first responders. I've been doing this 12 years.

"I've worked in an ambulance. I know what goes on in an ambulance. Some of my guys have never even set foot in the back of an ambulance. To be able to respond to a call with paid professional service employees and watch them and learn from them on the job is the best training that I can offer them."

County Commission President Dave Tolliver says it's ridiculous that the situation has gone this far.

"It's amazing to me that we're talking about people's lives," he said. " ... It's amazing to me that an ambulance company and a first-responder can not get along in a little community of Coal City. I'm not putting the blame on anyone, but what we'll do is get with (Raleigh fire levy coordinator) Mr. Kevin Price and if I need to get with Dr. Staggers then I will.

"We've got to have this service in Coal City. I know the area you're talking about and I know where you're coming from as a first-responder. You can get there in five minutes and we all know five minutes is a critical time if someone has a heart attack or whatever. I don't know who's to blame, but I just can't comprehend why this stuff gets blown out of proportion."

-- E-mail: cneff@register-herald.com

Copyright 2014 - The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va.