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Operations EMS Fall 2005 By Robert Keller, Fire Chief This article is the continuation in a series of articles describing the history and services provided by the Brimfield Fire Department. Early fire departments were organized to protect cities from large fire losses. Fire fighting was a dangerous job and it was not uncommon for an entire city block to suffer fire damage resulting in hundreds of people injured or dead and huge property losses. Insurance companies formed fire brigades to quickly respond and protect their insured structures. As time passed, fire fighting equipment improved and building codes were developed resulting in fewer fires and less damage. Fire departments today continue to respond to fires but the role of the fire service is changing. Residential smoke detectors and fire alarm systems have resulted in single room fires rather than an entire building or city block. Brimfield firefighters are trained to fight fires and to provide other services offered by the department including emergency medical service (EMS), hazardous material spills, fire prevention, public education and areas of specialized rescue. Today, EMS accounts for 70-75% of our emergency call volume. Have you ever wondered how or when the Brimfield Fire Department first began offering EMS and paramedic service? It hasn’t always been a service provided by the fire department yet it now seems natural to see large red medical trucks running emergency calls throughout the Township. The fire service no longer refers to these vehicles as ambulances, preferring to call them med units. From the 1930’s and continuing through the late 1960’s, ambulance service was provided by area funeral homes. Bissler & Sons and Tinker Funeral Homes in Kent, and Shorts and Wood Funeral Homes in Ravenna used either a hearse or station wagon to transport residents to the hospital. Equipment was minimal and response times depended on the availability of staff for the ambulance. During the 1960’s, Bissler & Sons Funeral Home bought two cars specially designed for ambulance use. In those days, before emergency 911-telephone service, each service passed out bright telephone stickers with a number to call during an emergency. Recall that this was a time when doctors still made house calls and held office hours in their home office. Only the very ill went to the hospital and most of those were directly admitted to the hospital. Ambulance service was used primarily to transport the seriously injured or gravely ill. At the same time hospital emergency rooms were small, often with part-time staff and doctors who were moonlighting to pay medical school loans. The emergency room doctor might be trained as a general practitioner or a psychiatrist. The care one received in the emergency room was dependent upon the experience of the nursing staff and doctor, and in some cases the patient waited until his/her family doctor came to the hospital. In 1968 Bob Alexander and Jake Cowley bought Bissler & Sons two ambulances and began doing business as Kent Ambulance Service. Ownership changed hands in the early 1970’s when Mike Mercer bought the business. Kent Ambulance and Shorts Funeral Home continued to offer emergency ambulance service to residents of Brimfield Township however there was never a guarantee that either company would have an ambulance staffed and response times were often delayed. Ambulance attendants were trained in Advanced Red Cross first-aid techniques and began using hand-powered hydraulic equipment rather than wrecker operators to extricate injured patients from car crashes. In 1968 the Brimfield Fire Department purchased a Chevrolet panel van for use at fires using funds donated by the Siren-Aiders, the ladies auxiliary. The van was converted to become a makeshift ambulance and was equipped with an ambulance cot and first-aid box, and eventually an oxygen unit. At first the department limited the use of the van to firefighters when fighting fires. Either Kent Ambulance or Shorts Funeral Home was called when an ambulance was needed to transport residents to the hospital. The death of a young boy who drowned in a pond near Brimfield Lake in May of 1974 led to a dramatic change in the delivery of pre-hospital emergency medical care in Brimfield Township. On that day the fire department performed CPR on the young boy for 25 minutes while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. The death of the young boy caused the community and the fire department to consider using the fire department van to transport residents of the community. The decision was not an easy one. Fire Chief James Nash believed that ambulance business was not for firemen and retired when community pressure called for a fire department-based ambulance service. Walter Kaufman was appointed as the new Fire Chief and the fire department began providing EMS service on a limited basis later that same year using the fire department van converted to an ambulance. The addition of medical stretchers and other necessary equipment soon led the fire department to the conclusion that their van was just too small to function efficiently as an ambulance. In 1977 a community-wide canvass for donations was undertaken to collect money to purchase the Township’s first commercially built ambulance. By 1979 it became apparent that the cost to provide EMS service to the community required additional funding beyond what was budgeted to operate the fire department. To help offset the added cost a fee was established by the Board of Trustees for patients treated or transported to the hospital. In 1982 Chief Kaufman and Assistant Chief Lloyd Grund, along with firefighter/paramedic Charles Garver made a presentation to the Board of Trustees requesting that they purchase a cardiac monitor/defibrillator and pharmaceutical supplies needed to provide a limited paramedic level service to the community. The first two paramedics on the fire department were Charles Garver and Linda Rowles (Brown). The addition of EMS service to the fire department added significantly to the number of emergency calls received by the fire department. In response the department sent three additional members to a paramedic training program. They were Dennis Holodnak, Kenneth Kaufman and Charles Palmer, Jr. The department also began to staff part-time firefighter/EMT’s during the daytime hours to handle the increase in calls while volunteers continued to respond to calls during the evening and night time hours. This year, the Brimfield Fire Department will respond to just over 1,000 emergency calls. The department consists of a combination of part-time and full-time employees and is staffed 24/7. All firefighters are trained to the basic EMT level and 16 firefighters are trained to the advanced level of paramedic. We currently have two med units equipped to provide advanced life support care.  The
members of the Brimfield Fire Department are proud of the EMS
service that they provide and grateful to the community for their
support. In 2004 the fire department took delivery of a new med
unit to replace an outdated backup unit. The new med unit is a
state of the art vehicle and is expected to deliver EMS service to
the community for the next 10 years.Charles Garver contributed historical information for this article.
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