Saturday, April 23, 2022
AMBULANCE (Continued from Page 2)
Uhl, however, said at the time that the Galloway agency ultimately “agreed to cover them as a primary” and to “make sure an ambulance arrives in Bass River within a reasonable timeframe,” for now. “As far as our agreement is concerned, I am concerned about the amount of time it takes our ambulances to get up there,” said Uhl last December. “The best-case scenario – it takes 10 to 12 minutes. The worst-case scenario – it takes 20 to 25 minutes to get there.” But the deciding factor that Uhl said last year led him to agree to the temporary arrangement is that “fortunately, for Bass River,” the New Gretna Volunteer Fire Company maintains a “first responder unit” that “provides oxygen and all life-sustaining stuff” until EMTs arrive on-scene at a medical emergency. “Quite frankly, had something like that not been in place, I probably would not have agreed to something like this,” declared Uhl last year. But Uhl, in previously maintaining to this newspaper that the temporary arrangement “can’t sustain itself” and “has got to be temporary,” pointed out, as Bourguignon did at the time, that “we cut down on non-essential mutual aid to neighboring communities in Atlantic County.” Uhl did not return this newspaper’s messages seeking comment on the latest arrangement as of press time. However, Buzby-Cope, upon emerging from an April 4 Bass River Board of Commissioners’ executive session in which EMS services for the municipality was reportedly discussed, revealed Bass River had “had meetings” with the Galloway Township Ambulance Squad since last December
AD HOTLINE: (609) 801-2392 or SALES@ PINEBARRENSTRIBUNE.COM (when Galloway was officially OK’d by the commissioners to provide ambulance service to Bass River on a temporary basis) and declared the agency was “doing a fabulous job here in our town, getting our folks to the hospital.” “They have been covering us since November and we wanted to see where we were with that relationship, and, so therefore, we would like to move forward with them, but they would need to go to their Board of Trustees and discuss finances with that,” Buzby-Cope added. Uhl, who attended the April 4 Bass River Board of Commissioners meeting, as well as took questions from the public during the session, revealed providing emergency medical services to Bass River on a more permanent basis was “something we have been talking about now for a while.” follow us on “If we take on the responsibility of Bass facebook.com/MedfordUMC River, we will go ahead and work with the towns (that Galloway currently provides primary or backup services to and vice versa),” Uhl said. “We will make sure we make plans with the people we utilize for our backup service. Obviously, that would include the volunteer service out of Washington Township.” This newspaper previously reported that the Green Bank Volunteer Ambulance Squad, which provides EMS service to neighboring Washington Township, was one of the area entities that has been impacted by a national trend of declining volunteerism, down to a handful of members, with Barbara Cavileer, it’s chief, indicating earlier this year that with Galloway no longer responding with the same “efficiency” as a backup provider, it was adding additional strain on the Green Bank organization. Uhl, on April 4, said that he had met with the Atlantic County EMS Chief’s Association, and, in doing so, advised them See AMBULANCE/ Page 13
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