MAS: Saving lives on their own time

No matter what the situation, members of the Morristown Ambulance Squad respond with ambulance lights flashing, sirens waling and emergency medical technicians preparing for any circumstance.

"When you look at Sept. 11, people always say, 'Police, fire and other emergency workers,'" said Karen Corica, squad president. "They miss a whole big component. We are a major part of the emergency management plan, but everybody forgets us. We are a forgotten service yet we provide a vital function."

The volunteer squad responded to four calls during typical daytime work hours on a recent Monday, as a reporter followed members from scene to scene. In 2003, the Morristown Ambulance Squad received about 2,400 calls. Last year, 87 percent of these calls were answered by squad members. If the Morristown squad cannot respond, neighboring towns provide assistance.

With more volunteers, especially during daylight hours, squad leaders say they can answer more requests. Corica said she wants the numbers to be between 93 and 94 percent, as they were in 1999.

She said she tries to have someone at the headquarters at all times.

"We try to be here, but we're not always here. We admit that," Corica said. She added that she wants to increase the numbers of daytime members.

The squad building at 16 Early St., adjacent to the town Department of Public Works, was built in 1963 by the squad's founding members. It was constructed with donated materials. Standing in one corner in the central meeting room gives a view of the entire building, from the kitchen to the bedroom with two bunk beds to the on-call lounge.

The squad, formed in 1961, has a budget of $85,000; it receives $60,000 of that total from the town. With 39 towns in the county, there are 30 ambulance squads. Only the Morristown Ambulance Squad and the Morris Minute Men, who cover Morris Township and Morris Plains, have sleep-in squads. Others in the county have duty crews who are on call each night but can stay at home.

Down time

When squad members are not out on a call, they spend down time at their headquarters, doing paperwork, cleaning, getting coffee, checking supplies, running errands and sometimes paying their own bills. On the day a reporter spent with them, squad members spent time between calls visiting Children's Garden preschool and Assumption School so they could explain to children about EMTs, oxygen masks and car seats and show them the inside of an ambulance.

Whatever they are doing, however, once members they hear a scanner tone that signals the squad, they are quiet to listen for details. Their pace quickens when they hear the address, dash outside to an ambulance and head through the streets of Morristown. Sometimes, they drive on the opposite side of the road, other times they jump curbs to get through traffic.

As the ambulance pulled into the driveway of Calvary Baptist Church to help a woman who was having trouble breathing just before noon, another volunteer offered his services. Andy Ainsworth, who works at the Morris School District, saw the ambulance and helped lift the patient down a flight of stairs to the street level. Ainsworth was an EMT elsewhere.

The Morristown Ambulance Squad is staffed completely with volunteers, all of whom work full- or part-time jobs. Squad Vice President Dominick Sandelli, a 1996 graduate of Morristown High School, is a computer technician. Casey O'Connell is an emergency room nurse at Morristown Memorial Hospital. Heather Fortier drives a school bus part-time. Corica is a paramedic for Atlantic Health System, based at Morristown Memorial Hospital.

There are about 30 volunteers, including eight Morristown High School students.

"It's tough," Corica said. "When you think about the town and the business district, the days of the mom and pop grocery stores when pop could leave for a while to fight a fire are gone."

For Corica, volunteering for an ambulance squad came before her work as a paid paramedic. Twenty-three years ago, she helped her then-husband with first aid courses. She has volunteered in Morristown for more than 17 years.

Paramedics, unlike emergency medical technicians, have the ability to start an IV and administer medication.

Corica said, while she volunteers as an EMT, she does not get frustrated watching the paramedics do a job that she handles professionally.

"I know that I still have a major job to do to get this person to more help," Corica said. "At least I can give a really good report to the emergency room staff. I'm too busy with patient care to get frustrated by what I can't do."

A majority of the squad's calls come from the elderly. They mostly are medical calls, not traumas.

But Sandelli said one night he remembers vividly was last July, when Irvington resident James Vaughn reportedly shot and killed 72-year-old Maxine McCaden at her Hillairy Avenue home and shot and injured McCaden's 52-year-old daughter.

"That night, I didn't care which police (from what town) showed up, as long as they showed up," Sandelli said. "They do come as soon as we ask for somebody."

Corica, too, vividly remembers that night. She said the night was successful in terms of emergency response.

"It just flowed," Corica said. "We were able to sit and talk afterward because there were some (squad members) who hadn't seen this before."

O'Connell remembers a woman in her late 30s who lived on Mount Kemble Place and called for help because she was having chest pains. When O'Connell and others arrived, the woman was talking and walking around her home when she suddenly went into cardiac arrest.

After the EMTs shocked her with a defibrillator, the woman was alert and talking and telling them there was no need for her to go to the hospital.

"She was way too young to go into cardiac arrest," O'Connell said. "We got her right back."

O'Connell's mother has been an EMT in New Vernon for 19 years.

"I was raised to give back, but I chose EMS because of my mom," said O'Connell, who has served with the Morristown squad for more than seven years. "For me, it's not a way of life, it's just a part of my life."

Helping out

O'Connell said she remembers, as a child, several evenings when she could not eat dinner with her mother.

"I understood that she was going to help somebody who couldn't help themselves," O'Connell said.

Volunteer Heather Fortier, a mother of two, said she faces challenges balancing her home life, her job and her volunteer work. Five years ago, Fortier saw a newspaper ad stating that the ambulance squad needed drivers.

"I told (Corica), 'I'll drive but I won't handle patients,'" Fortier said. "She told me, 'That's not the way it works,' so I tried it."

As a mother, Fortier said emergencies involving children are difficult to handle.

"I have to put up an emotional wall to get through a bad call," she said. She said she remembers trying to calm two children who had been burned in a fire as the ambulance drove them to Saint Barnabas Medical Center.

"I don't know that the kid calls are worse for me," Fortier said. "They're hard for everybody."

Fortier said she once arrived at a home to find an unresponsive older woman. As technicians worked on her, the woman's daughter arrived and started screaming that she had a do not resuscitate order. The daughter, however, could not find the document.

"She kept screaming, 'Let my mother die in peace,'" Fortier remembers. "It was very emotional for the whole family."

Crew chief

Peter Blin, 32, of Morristown is the Sunday night crew chief and the squad's unofficial maintenance man. During the day, Blin works in technical support for Verizon Wireless. At the squad headquarters, he weeds, mows the lawn and cleans the building.

"I just like helping people," Blin said. "I like lending a hand."

Adam Tilson, 22, is a full-time student at Touro College in Brooklyn, New York, and also volunteers. Tilson is studying both to become a rabbi and a physician's assistant.

"Anyone who wants to go into the medical field should go this route," Tilson said while riding in the back of an ambulance leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident. "It's good to see if you can handle everything. You get a lot to be thankful for this way. It's a good feeling."

Squad members are appealing to the business community to try to bulk up their staff during the day.

Business people must be able to commit to a minimum of one to three hours each week. Training courses for CPR and first responders are taught by ambulance squad volunteers.

Sandelli said the program is aimed to improve daytime response time and have trained responders located throughout Morristown.

"The goal is to have people understand they can do this job," Corica said. "They don't need a medical background. It's something anybody can do."