By Dan O’Brien
The Union Leader
WEARE, N.H. — Beginning Monday, the fire department will start paying emergency medical technicians to handle medical calls after voters approved the action in the last town election.
By a 2-1 margin, voters approved using $90,000 from an ambulance vehicle reserve fund to pay for the EMTs. Thirty certified EMTs have been hired to work on a part-time, rotating basis to respond to emergencies from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
While the town has grown by nearly 3,000 people in the last 10 years, the number of volunteer EMTs available during the day has dropped, forcing Weare to rely on mutual aid from surrounding towns. Weare’s fire department is mostly worked by volunteers.
More than 20 percent of emergency calls were handled by medics from surrounding towns last year, officials said. Fire departments in nearby towns threatened to charge Weare fees unless the town came up with a solution.
“We were approaching a crisis,” Selectman Richard Butt said. “It was becoming very stressful for a lot of people and very frustrating for the fire departments.”
Fire Chief Raymond Eaton said one emergency call took 67 minutes to respond to last year while another call, for a woman suffering chest pains, took over 45 minutes to get to.
Eaton, fire chiefs from surrounding towns and the Weare Board of Fire Wards devised the per diem plan last fall and put it on last March’s town ballot. The group held several informational meetings in the two months before the election and discussed it at the town’s deliberative session.
Of the 30 EMTs hired, half already work on-call for the Weare fire department, while the remaining work for other communities.
Officials are hoping to offset some of the EMT costs with a federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant, but won’t know if they’ve been selected for the grant for another three months.
Butt says the new EMT plan is cost-effective. The town gains revenue from health insurance companies when responding to calls, and that money goes back into the ambulance reserve fund, which is paying for the EMTs.
The EMTs will not receive benefits from the town because they only work part-time. They will also be required to pay for their own uniforms, which is basically just a polo shirt with the Weare Fire Department’s emblem, Eaton said.
Copyright 2010 Union Leader Corp.