Volunteer first responders are essential to our safety, and sense of community
A COLUMN by Kathryn Ross
When I was younger and trying to choose a career path for myself, I had several friends who were active in the local ambulance squad, but I knew then that my career course wouldn’t take me in that direction.
It takes a special kind of individual to volunteer for duty on the ambulance corps and I’m not one of them.
Ambulance corps members are unique- brave and selfless. They are willing to undergo weeks and months of training, often over years, to learn the skills to save lives and offer care and how to deal with trauma.
My friends on the squad and I used to argue about who was worse, the ambulance crews waiting for the chimes to go off calling for volunteers or, reporters waiting for the alarms and phone to ring to cover an exciting story. Both calls usually meant that someone was in trouble or that something awful had happened.
I have one friend, Kathie, who grew up in Wellsville and who now lives in Louisville, KY, who went to college to become a professional advanced emergency medical technician. While studying she volunteered for the emergency services in her community. Over the years she collected a lot of interesting stories. She told one, where she was called out in the middle of a dark fall night while working for emergency services in Louisville. A truck had rolled over on the highway. As she was climbing around the truck bed checking for victims, she couldn’t figure out what she was walking on. The debris was soft and hard at the same time. It kind of unnerved her, until she realized the truck had been transporting wrapped Christmas trees.
Recently when I was having supper with the members of my Thursday Night Dinner Club, I was interested in two members, who kept looking at their phones. They reported a fatal all-terrain vehicle accident on Niles Hill that members of the local emergency services had responded to, was being investigated by the state police.
By now almost everyone knows that the fatal accident involved Wellsville Elementary School teacher Ashley Robichaud and her six-year-old daughter Emersyn. They were killed when their ATV overturned in a pasture. Her three-year old son was taken to the hospital and survived.
The community is in shock over the loss of this beloved teacher and her daughter. A GoFundMe page was almost immediately put up to help with costs. Collections are being accepted on Ebay and there is a donation box at Fisher’s Pharmacy. You can also directly donate to the Robichaud’s husband, Jason, at Community Bank. Giant Food Mart is asking customers to round up for the family until the end of the month.
I don’t know how other communities respond to these kinds of tragedies. Here in Wellsville, you can always expect the community to respond with charity and support in times of tragedy and need. The response happens almost immediately after such tragedies as house fires and tragic accidents. It doesn’t take long for this community to respond.
In these times of crises, we should also find compassion for the first responders. They have the job of protecting us from ourselves and the fates. When the alarm blares in the middle of the night, when the radio crackles, whether it’s a call for help, automobile or other kind of accident, they respond. As I said in the beginning it takes a special kind of person to drop everything and answer the tones.
I am, and we should all be, grateful for these people, these selfless volunteers. In this community we cannot afford a paid ambulance corps, the same way we cannot afford a paid fire department. We depend on volunteers.
So, when the call goes out for donations we need to respond. When the firefighters stand on Main Street holding an empty boot or when they are selling BBQ tickets, we need to dig deep in our pockets and get out our wallets, because these are the people we depend on when tragedy strikes.
Kathryn Ross is a Wellsville native and lifelong media figure. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
