 | Times-Mirror Staff Photo/Raymond Thompson Long time Hillsboro resident Lucy Roderick, 84, chats with Tyler Drake and Ray Mowen Jr. during a visit on March 15. Roderick lives alone and the firefighters stop by every few weeks to check on her. |
NEERSVILLE – There are days at the Neersville Fire Station when firefighters never turn on the trucks’ sirens.
And then there are days when the crew members barely get a chance to take off their gear before the next call for a car crash, medical emergency or fire sends them back on the road.
Such is life in a rural fire department – it’s feast or famine.
However, a proposed cut in the county’s fiscal year 2011 budget could mean more famine than feast for the station.
County leaders have proposed cutting the station’s basic life support ambulance service and four full-time firefighter positions.
Residents in need of transport to a hospital would have to wait longer for an ambulance to arrive from another town. And while the firefighters still could provide medical attention, they could not provide advanced life support without the ambulance.
Fifty-seven percent of the calls the crew were sent out on last year were emergency medical service calls that required advanced medical care, Capt. Justin Green said.
“The people out here are very independent. They have to be, to be living out in a rural area. They take care of themselves,” Green said. “It’s only when they’re really hurting or they’re seriously injured that they call 911.”
The cut would save the county $307,000. Neersville residents say it would rob them of a desperately needed service.
The closest hospital, Inova Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg, is 30 miles away.
“I’ve very concerned,” said Jennifer Breaux, director of sales, hospitality and marketing at Breaux Vineyards. “If we had a medical emergency, we’re so far from the hospital we have to depend on them for medical care.”
Resident Lucy Roderick has come to rely on the crew members, who check on her regularly. She’s 84 and lives alone.
“I think if I need help, I know they’ll be there,” Roderick said.
‘The Outpost’
Tucked away amid farmland between the Blue Ridge and Short Hill mountains, the Neersville Fire Station’s moniker is “The Outpost.” It’s the northernmost fire station in Virginia.
Twenty firefighters on four shifts protect 250 to 300 homes, from the Hillsboro town limits to the Potomac River.
There’s also a small staff of volunteer firefighters who help to protect the community.
The station has three firetrucks. It received its ambulance in March 2008.
When a patient is in need of advanced medical care, Green said his crew will meet another ambulance staffed with paramedics on the way to the hospital to avoid long wait times for service.
The loss of this service could mean lives lost.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, responders should get to the scene of a medical incident within four minutes for basic life support services and within eight minutes for patients who require advanced life support services.
Without the Neersville ambulance service, patients could have to wait more than 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, especially during the morning and evening worker commute times when routes 9 and 287 are clogged with drivers coming home from work, said Neersville firefighter Ray Mowen Jr.
“You could easily tack on an extra 15 minutes to the [regular] commute time,” Mowen said.
Small community, big outreach
The crew of the Neersville fire station know their community – every road, pond, vineyard and patch of woods.
They’ve come to learn the lay of the land through simply driving around, visiting with residents and checking to make sure their homes and businesses are free from fire hazards.
Mowen and Tyler Drake, are the two who most often check up on Roderick to make sure she’s faring well.
“It surprised me,” she said. “I was just so pleased that they came up here out of the clear blue sky.”
She has found that the men not only provide her with a sense of security, but also with a listening ear as she educates them on the history of Hillsboro.
Breaux said the firefighters often check on her business too, in addition to providing safety coverage for events the vineyard hosts.
She said she’s gotten to know the crew better than she knows the community in her own hometown of Outer Banks, N.C.
“They’re the epitome of what you expect your local fire department to be,” Breaux said.
Have a clue:
The fact that F&R runs more EMS than fire calls is no secret. As you stated its that way across the country. The problem is you are looking at the problem with non-fire and rescue logic. The truth is that cuts shouldn’t be made from the ambulance or fire truck, period.
You also are incorrect in saying that stations do not respond with an ambulance if there is one in the station. There are multiple stations that cross staff a fire truck and ambulance, meaning they take whichever is called for first.Infact, neersville is one of those stations. They cross staff a tanker, which incase you didn’t know, is vital to rural firefighting operations. While this works from a budget prospective, it is NOT good from a public safety perspective.
Can you imagine the public outrage if someone DID die in a house fire in neersville if the closest fire suppression unit came from purcellville?
If we did as you said, using logic from a totally budget outlook, why not only have 4 engines, 2 trucks and maybe a rescue staffed in the entire county? Then we could just put an ambulance at every station, maybe even two! Who cares if the next fire truck is coming from ashburn to neersville for a fire, since the NUMBERS are in your favor, just hope its not your house on fire!
Using your logic, you are gambling with peoples lives, and property. Thats not something that most tax payers would be willing to do.
If cuts have to be made in the field, they need to be in the areas where there are stations within minutes of each other. I know first hand that at 5:00 in the afternoon or anytime on a summer weekend it can take Lovettsville, Purcellville, or Round Hill from 30 to 45 minutes to get to some of the out of the way homes in Neersville. There are no alternate routes to avoid the river traffic on 340 or commuter traffic on 9. This isn’t the case in Sterling, Ashburn, or Leesburg. As a tax payer I would demand the county find an alternative solution to a problem they created to begin with. It seems to me common sense has been abandon by our leaders once again. What’s it going to take, an unnecessary death and a huge law suite to shake up what should be intelligent policy makers to see the error in their thought process?
Here are some clues for “get a clue”:
In Loudoun County, approximately 71% of the calls to 911 are for Emergency Medical Services (EMS), 29% for Fire. (Source Loudoun County FY2010 Adopted Budget, Fire Rescue Section, 2-54 and 2-57 available at http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=2727). This correlates well to the National data for LC’s population size of 67% EMS (obtained from the National Fire Protection Agency page 8, report dated November 2009 available at http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files//PDF/OS.FSPerformanceMeasures.pdf). The National data shows that only 3.7% of the incidents are actual fires. The rest are false alarms, hazardous materials, etc.
The point is that the majority of times the call is for EMS and the number of times that someone is trapped in a burning building are thankfully very few. So why do you reduce staff for the area that represents your biggest volume? Also, the way Loudoun Fire Rescue runs things if you are assigned to the Fire Truck and there is a call for EMS, you are told to respond with the fire truck even if there is an ambulance in the station. The patient then has to wait for the next closest ambulance to come from another station. So the question I have for you is if you are very sick and call 911, do you want to ride on top of the Fire truck all the way to the hospital? Like insurance it’s a numbers game. In this case the numbers indicate that the staffing should be allocated to where most of the business is not the other way around. Don’t believe me, get a clue and read the actual documents yourself.
To those of you who ask for help from WV, think again. Just because Harpers Ferry has a “full compliment of engines and EM personnel” doesn’t mean they actually have the people to staff them. And 10 minutes from harpers ferry is NOT close in terms of Fire and Rescue service.
The “ever increasing Fire-Rescue Budget”? Give me a break. The schools take up SEVENTY percent of revenue in the county, the other 30% makes up the rest of the county, which includes F&R, LCSO, Libraries, parks and rec, etc. Public Safety should have priority over everything. Period. No one’s lives are at stake on a day to day basis in any school in this county.
Why shouldn’t they reduce the fire crew? Are you that dumb? NO, buildings aren’t more important than people, BUT the people INSIDE of those buildings are just as important! Obviously you have years of experience with F&R to make a statement like that. So tell me, you would be ok with just an ambulance coming to your house while its on fire? How about if you are trapped inside?
What most people don’t realize is the Fire and Rescue department is like insurance, you pay for it every year, and you personally might not use it every year, but what happens when you do need it? what happens if they aren’t there when you did need them?
The county needs to sell the property they bought for 720,000, on Harpers Ferry Rd. The house sits vacant.
Our County Government needs to wake-up and smell the roses. Cuts should be made within the Loudoun County Headquarters and the County School Headquaters off of the Greenway. People having a medical emergency should have help within the 4-5 miniute time frame. Saving a persons life is our calling. Loudon county needs to look into their own Headquater staff, obsorb the loss. Maybe if they used the private sector’s Lean Six Sigma techniques and applied them to their headquaters, they would find their budget could be reduced dramaticly. Maybe they should get out of bed with the Developers and support all people under medical emerngencies,even in a small town should have priorty.
I feel the Board of Supervisor should sell the almost new property of 24+acres bought 10-2008 for $720.000 that was supposed to be the new Fire Dept. The house just sits there empty and half the time the grass isn’t cut.
How Naive! Leave it to the County to pick a “poster child” budget item that everyone would say “oh no, not that” to. Why don’t they reduce the fire crew instead of the ambulance crew? Are buildings more important? Why don’t they reduce some of the bloated HQ staff instead of field personnel? How many times does Neersville respond out of the county? A lot! Have Jefferson WV help Loudoun for a change. Clearly a completely political ploy to grab emotional responses and support the ever-increasing fire-rescue budget.
How about Mutual Aid with Harpers Ferry? They make the “Out Post” sound so isolated, but it’s only 10 minutes to Harpers Ferry where there is a full compliment of engines and EM personnel.
Are you kidding me! The one thing that does not need to be cut from ANY budget is a Life Support Unit and/or four firefighters! I grew up in Hillsboro, moved out of the area in 1993, and I’m quite sure the area around Hillsboro and Neersville hasn’t changed that much. This area has always been rural and in dire need of these services! To cut them now would be taking away the most needed bit of survival for these residents! The County leaders MUST look elsewhere for their cuts!!
PS: I knew Ms.Lucy from growing up in Hillsboro in the 50’s and I’m so glad to see she still has the same spunk today as she did back then..she’s remarkable..
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