RESCUE!

Back when I was in college, I spent four years volunteering as an Emergency Medical Technician on a squad we ran on our campus. It was actually quite a lot of fun, especially for someone who thought he was pre-med. While the idea of going to medical school was quickly abandoned, being an EMT gave me just enough knowledge to be dangerous, and allowed me to walk around campus with a radio and occasionally drive with lights and sirens blaring. In truth, most of our calls consisted of cleaning up the mistakes that fellow students made after drinking too much.

Now that I have moved out of the big city, I decided that getting back into EMS would be fun. My town is covered by a volunteer squad, and when I went down to introduce myself, they were happy to have the help. While I'm not currently certified as an EMT (I'll need to take a course two nights a week for six months starting in June), I do get to drive the trucks and help out when needed.

Our squad is quite well equipped:

369, our ambulance

366, our rescue truck

We also handle water rescue during the summer (we're a beach community with a large vacationing population on summer weekends), so we've got a few boats at our disposal too:

This is a Zodiac RIB with a water canon for marine fire fighting. It's in the water from April to October.

This smaller Zodiac is the surf rescue boat, and is towed to the beach by the 366 truck when needed.

We're also warehousing a firetruck for a neighboring department while they renovate their firehouse.

FBS likes this firetruck the best, but it's not ours.

We've also got a pair of Kawasaki jetskis for surf rescue. My plan is to qualify as a rescue swimmer this summer, so that I can help out with water rescue calls, and continue to work on my EMT training so I can be more useful than just as a gopher and driver on medical calls.

There is a big difference between this and my college squad: These calls tend to be people who've called 911 for a real reason. In the month that I've been on the squad I've helped out with a cardiac arrest, a drink driver hitting a tree, and a diabetic coma, as well as a bunch of less stressful situations.

I certainly like the adrenaline rush of responding to calls as much as anyone, but I also really enjoy the feeling of helping to make my community a safer place. It's also been a great way to meet people, since my family and I are still new to town.

If you get the opportunity to become involved in volunteer emergency response - perhaps your volunteer fire department, ambulance corps, police auxiliary, or even CERT team, I think you'll find it to be a very rewarding experience!

Without giving information that would violate anyone's privacy, I'll post a note about any particularly interesting calls I go out on going forward.