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Munson donates ambulance to twister-ravaged town
(by Joseph Koziol Jr. - July 21, 2011)
Munson donates ambulance to twister-ravaged town
By JOSEPH KOZIOL JR.
To some, it may sound corny.
But, for Doug Kubik, a training and maintenance officer with the Mount Hebron Volunteer Fire Department in Alabama, it is a way of life.
"Neighbors helping neighbors," Mr. Kubik said. "It may sound corny, but it's still true in small-town America."
Neighbors helping neighbors is the motto used by the department which Mr. Kubik serves in a rural area in northeast Alabama.
Last week, the department learned that neighbors can come from more than a few blocks away.
Thanks to an offer by neighbors to the north in Munson Township, the Mount Hebron department will be able to provide an ambulance for the more than 800 homes it serves in its 50-square-mile service area.
Munson Trustees signed over the title to a 1995 Horton Ambulance, scheduled for replacement, to the Mount Hebron department.
Mr. Kubik and Marc Neuffer, a public information officer for the Mount Hebron department and the Douglas Police Department, a nearby municipality, drove up to Munson last week at their cost to take the new piece of equipment back home.
"The ambulance is a piece of equipment that our department can put to great use," Mr. Neuffer wrote to Munson officials July 6.
"We are a rural VFD that covers 50 square miles in Marshall County, Ala.," he said. "We have 17 members, including two paramedics, an EMT (emergency medical technician) and five first responder medics. The ambulance will be used for not only emergency medical calls, but also for medic support during fire response, field operations command and SAR operations and support of other VFDs in our area. As you can imagine, during storms like the last one, the area emergency medical and response systems are spread very thin. This vehicle will fill a gread void in our area."
The storms that ravaged the area in April were part of a series of tornadoes in the southern United States that made national news for their frequency and severity.
Mr. Kubik said that for a department that has to often reach into its members' pockets to fund itself, the ambulance is a blessing.
"It's an absolutely magnanimous gesture by you (the township)," Mr. Kubik said. "This is a humbling experience. It is a positive move to better service."
The department operates with one pumper truck, a truck for brush fires and a one-ton pickup truck, used as a command vehicle, Mr. Kubik said when an ambulance is needed, it has to come from 13 miles away.
Mr. Neuffer said the need was evident during the last tornado outbreak.
"During response to the April tornadoes, we responded to emergency calls in our coverage area and then sent teams to two adjacent towns, Douglas and Boaz, to help clear roads for emergency traffic," he wrote. "One of our members broke his leg while we were engaged in field operations. We had to wait for 30 minutes for an ambulance ... something we will no longer have to do (wait) after we have this ambulance."
Mr. Kubik said he was impressed with the network of roads he found in the north, which essentially travels straight paths. In their coverage area, he said, the roads wind through hills, often to homes without identifying addresses.
"They (the roads) are goat trails that got paved," he said.
The tornado season is a way of life for those in the South, Mr. Kubik said. Whether the fire department's coverage area is hit, he said, depends simply on whether the tornado weather shifts to the north or south
Munson Fire Chief Bernie Harchar asked trustees for cooperation in the matter after seeing a report that a Columbus department had sent a fire engine to a department in the South to help after the tornadoes.
Mr. Harchar said his department was able to provide 18 sets of turnout gear to the department as well as 10 sets of self-contained breathing apparatus.
Mr. Harchar also credited the Geauga Medical Campus of University Hospital with providing a donation of basic EMS supplies to help stock the ambulance.
"One town is helping another town and that's what small towns do," Mr. Harchar said.
He said the ambulance has been maintained up until June, when it was taken out of service. He estimated that an ambulance in that condition could fetch between $10,000 and $35,000 if put out for bid.
Township Trustee Todd Ray said township officials were grateful to be able to aid another community with the possibly lifesaving equipment. "We are grateful to have this opportunity," he said. "It was an easy call to make and the right thing to do."
Mr. Ray said the township blessed with ample resources, noting that Fairmount Minerals, a Munson company, donated $50,000 last year to the fire department.
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