Fire & EMS

Just the other week, I signed some forms to join a different volunteer fire department, namely Keystone Fire Company of Rehrsburg, aka Berks County Station #27. I was going to wait until I got some pictures to post anything about it here on the blog, but I haven't gotten around to snapping any pictures. Maybe later. You can see some pictures from scenes that they were at by looking at Rehrsburg's website: http://www.keystone27.org/ One or two of the pictures on their home page are actually pictures that I took about a year ago at a structure fire with a camera that belongs to one of the guys from Rehrsburg. Rehrsburg covers a lot of area and provides a lot of mutual assistance far into the primary service areas of the surrounding fire departments. Rehrsburg is equipped with vehicle rescue equipment, and is big into training all sorts of rescue classes, especially BVRT (Basic Vehicle Rescue Technician). One of their guys is a police dispatcher (same guy who's camera I used) and teaches these various rescue classes on the side, and he's really good at it. He has his own website http://www.rescuetechs.com which I have mentioned before, and already have a link posted to the right of this page. He has taught some of the other Rehrsburg guys quite well, and they generally seem to perform pretty well on scene. I took the BVRT class through Rehrsburg back in 2007, and have not since picked up the "jaws-of-life" on the scene of an accident even once. Oh well....it was still worth it. What I'm more interested in at Rehrsburg though is their QRS unit. QRS stands for "Quick Response Servie." Rehrsburg's QRS unit is identified on Berks County fire dispatch radio as "Car 27." It is a Ford Explorer equipped with basically the same tools and equipment that a BLS (Basic Life Support) ambulance would have, only it can't transport a patient. The idea is that as a Quick Response unit, Car 27 is supposed to arrive on scene with an EMT before the ambulance, and begin providing BLS and/or first aid until the ambulance can arrive to transport the patient, and if there is more than one patient, the QRS personnel will continue assisting with EMS care until all the patients have been transferred to the care of ambulance personnel. In other words, QRS is an organized way for the fire department to equip and allow their firefighters who are also cross-trained as First Responders, EMT's, or Paramedics to begin providing early basic emergency medical care to patients at the scene of accidents, or any other medical or traumatic incident. From my perspective as an EMT with Bethel Ambulance working alongside of the guys from Rehrsburg on the scene of various incidents, Car 27 and Rescue 27 have both proven themselves quite useful. Sometimes when it is just the EMT and ambulance driver arriving by themselves on the scene of a patient who really should be in the ICU of a hospital, it's nice to have extra helping hands on scene to get the patient loaded up, and help with initial care until we are ready to leave the scene. Every call is different, but firefighting has evolved into more than just putting water on fires. Firefighters in this area tear crashed cars apart, set up landing zones for helicopters, direct traffic, pump out flooded basements, provide QRS, drive big shiny trucks that flash and make lots of glorious noise, and yes they fight fires too. There are specialty teams within the county who are trained in just about anything else you can imagine too, such as high-angle rope rescue, hazardous material incidents, and just about anything else you can imagine. Some of them use little detectors to sniff out gas leaks in buildings, or detect hot areas inside of walls, or find patients inside of burning buildings that you would not otherwise visualize through the smoke. It's a lot more than the bucket brigade that it was 100 years ago.

Most of you who read this blog already know that I work in the Emergency Department of Lehigh Valley Hospital. Right now, management is trying to minimize the amount of overtime for all employees throughout our entire network, including all 3 hospitals, citing the situation of the economy as the reason. So while I'm getting an average of approximately 40 hours per week, I happen to have some spare time here and there lately. I was considering getting a part time job somewhere, but hadn't been pursuing it too adamantly. However, recently I recieved a phone call from a Paramedic that I run with occasionally at Schuylkill Valley EMS. He also works at Exeter Ambulance, and is working on recruiting more staff for them. I met with him and got a tour of Exeter's station this week, and was given a good offer on a part-time job. It appears to be a good thing, and I think it would be foolish to pass this up, so I will probably go for it. So ends the era of saying that I only ever volunteered as an EMT. This will be the first paid position I take based on my EMT certification. From what I have heard, Exeter is a pretty reasonable place to work for and they offer one of the most competetive wages in Berks County. Check them out at http://www.exeterambulance.org/. If I had it to do again, I would have pursued full-time work on an ambulance squad more intently right out of EMT school, but back then I wasn't impressed with any of the pay offers. Now with almost 6 years of experience, the offers are a lot better. Also, with the never ending goal of eventually becoming a flight nurse, it will do me some good to get more experience in the pre-hospital EMS field than what I have been getting as a per diem volunteer.

So now the tally of departments I will be signed on with is getting sort of long: Bethel Community Ambulance, Schuylkill Valley EMS, Exeter Ambulance, Lehigh Valley Hospital's Cedar Crest Campus Emergency Department, Bernville Community Fire Company, and Keystone Fire Company of Rehrsburg. At this point though, I don't really plan to be very active with Bernville anymore. I might even hand in my stuff, and quit, but I'm not sure yet.

So, since blogs are for letting people know what on your mind or what you have been doing, that's some of what's been happening with me lately, among other things. Maybe I'll eventually post some pictures of Exeter Ambulance and Rehrsburg Fire on my Photobucket slideshow.

Gut-n-Owit

It's a phrase from the good-ol' days. Those of you who live locally, or those who lived here in the past, might remember a radio station in Boyertown that transmitted on 107.5 FM, and changed their call their call letters a few times over the years. If I remember correctly, they once called themselves WBYL, then later WBYO, then later WBYN. The radio station was the brainchild of one certain Berks County Dutchman named David Hendricks, among others. "Davey" had a radio show like none other called the "Wunnerfitz Hour." Davey would get on the air, and wait for people to call him, then they would yap away in Pennsylvania Dutch about anything and everything under the sun. The point of it was that there are still a lot of people in the Berks and Lehigh Valley area that still know how to speak PA Dutch, and Davey Hendricks wanted to hear it and give everybody else hear it. Almost every conversation on every phone call he got started with the caller asking, "Iss dis da Davey?" And Hendricks would answer, "Yah, diss iss da Davey."

It has been several years since the "Wunnerfitz Hour" has been broadcasted. Time moves on. Fast forward to now. WBYN no longer broadcasts on 107.5 FM. They've been replaced by some other station called "Frank FM." Unbeknown to me, WBYN still exists, and they transmit across the internet, AM radio, and HD radio....if I have all of my info correct. I don't think they do the "Wunnafitz Hour" anymore though. Dave Hendricks passed away earlier this year.

Wunnafitz hour or not, I wanted to post a link to the radio station, so I fiddled around with Blogger until I figured out how to design my own widget (or whatever you call it) for WBYN. You can see it to the right of this page, just below my music player. If you click on the WBYN banner, you can hear WBYN being broadcast on your computer if you have high-speed internet. If you click on WBYN.com, it will take you to the station's website. Enjoy!

Oh, and by the way, the phrase "Gut-n-Owit" means "Good evening" in PA Dutch. That's how Dave Hendricks usually ended most of his phone conversations on the Wunnafitz Hour. So on behalf of the entire old-school entourage of Wunnafitz Hour listeners and callers, I say "Gut-n-Owit to you Davey." Ok, is that weird or what?