Worden ambulance and medical services will be much more limited than they have been in the past following Monday night’s board meeting. An EMT was terminated at the meeting by a vote of 3-3, with the president of the board casting the tie-breaking vote. Following his termination, five other emergency medical service providers resigned as a sign of solidarity.
Fire Chief Lance Taylor stated that “75% of my ambulance crew is now gone, and those who stayed work full-time, so it just puts more hoops to jump through to take calls during the day.” Taylor has entered into a temporary agreement with American Medical Response based in Billings to cover medical calls during the day; however, their own calls will take priority. Therefore, should a medical emergency call come in from the Worden or Huntley area, AMR would only be able to respond to that call if they have a crew available. The Lockwood Fire Department will also assist with calls and responded to a call on Tuesday afternoon.
Joe Stratton, who had three previous years of experience and worked as an EMR in Worden for eight months, was terminated “due to probationary issues,” according to Lance Taylor. Stratton claims that he was let go due to a personal vendetta with another member of the department. “It just snowballed from a little incident in the beginning to the point where personal feelings got in the way and forced me out.” In his eight months with the department, Stratton estimates that he has responded to approximately 160 of the 200 calls during that time period. Stratton explained, “It is the community who is going to suffer. It is their ambulance.”
A former member of the department who resigned on Monday night said that there was a disagreement between members of the fire department regarding the efficacy of the ambulance service, stating that some members wanted to get rid of it entirely. “We (most of the members who resigned) took the majority of the calls, and no one else was willing to pick up the slack. I don’t want anything for what I am doing, but I would like someone in the department to say that we are doing a good job instead of constantly feeling like ‘Why am I doing this?’” Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said that a lot of changes would have to take place in order for him to return, especially the belittlement of ambulance drivers and workers.
According to Andrew Zimmerman, former EMS Director who also resigned on Monday night, a lack of laid-out policies and standard operating procedures contributed to the situation. Due to the absence of clearly defined policies, it seemed that the rules kept shifting and changing, and it was hard to know what to expect. “Even when Stratton followed all the rules he was aware of, because things weren’t really spelled out, someone could always point out something wrong with what he was doing.” When asked what it would take to fix the issues, Zimmerman stated, “What we really need is for a third-party consulting firm to come in and ensure that we have proper policies and bylaws laid out that can work tactically and also allow more structure. But something has to change.” Zimmerman emotionally explained that he felt he needed to lead by example and show the other EMS workers that it was acceptable to walk away from a bad situation.
In a text sent out by Chief Taylor to members of the fire department, it was announced that Doug O’Donnell, Assistant Fire Chief, “has stepped down, retired as a member of the department.” Chief Taylor stated, “At this time, we have a huge personnel issue with the Worden Fire Department that has caused several of our EMS members to take a step back until it gets resolved. We are working this out – we have gone through this before. I don’t want the community to panic and think that if something happens to them, that we won’t be able to get them help.”
As of press time, this remains a developing story, and as the story develops, additional information will be included in next week’s paper.
Why don’t you attend the meeting ??? Why do you ONLY get one side of the story ?? Why do you NOT SUPPORT your community ?? Why do you NOT let the community KNOW in your paper under week events that people CAN go to most of the meetings (including you Johnathan) that the fire department offers training for EMT, FIRE DEPARTMENT TRAINING??????