Hats off to the Stoneham Rescue Service volunteer EMTs! Especially blog reader Snoopy!

 the Stoneham Rescue Service is a rural northern Maine volunteer ambulance service that serves the 4 towns in Oxford County of Albany, Lovell, Stoneham, and Waterford (~200 sq miles, 4000 permanent residents, with probably an additional 4000 in tourist seasons) with a staff of 15 per diem daytime providers and 15 volunteer providers and drivers covering nights and weekends. 

Volunteering is a dying trend in the country, the struggle to cover shifts - especially at night - is real, and with the pandemic of the last year, even harder.

 A large percentage of the population is elderly, and beyond the usual cardiac, stroke, and fall calls are the  "subject in the water" from going through the ice, either fishing or powersports. 

On top of that, the Covid virus is jamming up normal operations, and EZMS services are dwindling, as the pay and hours aren't good, and many EMS people are getting experience on the way to getting a nursing job, after all the amount of formal education, plus the experience, is on a career path for a lot of people that have a goal of much better pay and hours. 

(My ex worked as a dispatch for a medical transport company here in San Diego, and even the dispatchers for an EMS department have to be overqualified and underpaid to be fluent in the medical and physiological understanding in order to do the dispatch job.) 

https://www.facebook.com/StonehamRescueMaine/posts/1621200838039781