To the Editor:
I write in support of the 911 millage that will appear on the ballot in August, not in my capacity as Alger County’s prosecutor but as a citizen who can attest to the value of a local 911 service.
By way of background I am an endurance riding enthusiast who manages several such events each year and one of them takes place in the fall on the Pine Marten Run trail system – we camp at the Tommy Page bridge on FR 2258 off FFH-13.
Many people will recall reading or hearing that there was a tragic accident at last year’s ride – a propane explosion in the living quarters of a horse trailer that left two people injured, one of whom died at a burn center a few days later.
The rest of the story is that the 911 calls placed from the camp site were answered in Negaunee and resulted in the dispatch, not of an ambulance from the Alger County Sheriff’s Department in Munising, 10-15 minutes away, but of the ambulance which serves the municipality (a township) in which the camp site was located, 45-60 minutes away. To add insult to injury the Alger County ambulance was an advanced life support unit staffed by on-site paramedics while the dispatched ambulance was basic transportation staffed largely by volunteers who had to first be summoned from their homes.
Suffice it to say that the ambulance response took forever, and while I’ve no reason to think a faster response would have altered the outcome, the delay in palliative care was unconscionable and one can certainly conceive of circumstances where such delay would be outcome-determinative.
It’s been pointed out to me that the placement of the 911 calls on cell phones as opposed to landlines left responders dependent on directions provided by the callers, but good directions were given and the dispatched ambulance was not lost; the fundamental problem was that the person on the other end of the line had no idea that the Alger County Sheriff’s Department was vastly closer to the Tommy Page bridge than the dispatched ambulance.
This, then, is what makes a local 911 service absolutely priceless – the familiarity of its operators with the surrounding communities, roads, and trails, especially when minutes and seconds have become units of suffering instead of time. I would therefore urge everyone to vote yes on this proposal.
Karen A. Bahrman