While a trend toward slowing response times by Harpswell ambulance crews might stir fears that people won’t get help fast enough during medical emergencies, department leaders say there’s a good reason for this trend — one that increases public safety rather than reducing it.
A growing percentage of emergencies are what first responders term “fall calls,” in which someone dials 911 not because of a heart attack or life-threatening injury — but because they simply need help getting up from a fall.
In those instances, emergency crews forgo lights and sirens and drive purposefully but safely to the scene. That contributes to slower overall statistics for ambulance responses, first responders say, but keeps the roads safer for all.
“When there’s no indication that a person’s life is in jeopardy, it’s all about the safety of the public and the folks in the rescue vehicle,” said David Mercier, fire chief with Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue. “That’s the most dangerous time, getting to the incident. We have to operate safely.”
At a recent Orr’s Island Library panel held to discuss the findings of a Harpswell Anchor special report on emergency services, Chief Benjamin Wallace Jr. — who leads the Cundy’s Harbor Volunteer Fire Department and the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department — said that factoring out non-urgent calls shows that ambulances are arriving more quickly than it might seem.
State emergency services data supports Wallace’s point. State reports on 911 calls analyzed by the Anchor show that when non-urgent calls are factored out, ambulance crews arrive four to six minutes faster than their median response times.
From 2021-23, Harpswell Neck ambulance crews typically took 18.3 minutes to arrive at all 911 calls. For urgent calls, however, that figure dropped to 13.6 minutes. (To arrive at these statistics, the Anchor took the median response times for each year, then averaged them over the three-year period.)
For the Cundy’s Harbor force, ambulances typically took 17.5 minutes to arrive at all categories of calls during the three-year period. For urgent calls, the response time dropped to 13.4 minutes.
On Orr’s and Bailey islands, the overall response time stood at 16.6 minutes. But for urgent calls, that time dropped to 10.3 minutes.
Wallace said residents should take heart from those figures, and from the knowledge that responding in a non-urgent way to less serious incidents makes the roads of Harpswell safer for all.
“I’ve literally had people pull out in front of me while going lights and siren,” said Wallace, who not only leads the two local departments but is a veteran firefighter and emergency medical technician with the Portland Fire Department. “It’s not just the patient, it’s not just the crew. It’s everyone on the road with us, too.”
Wallace’s observations are backed by national studies finding that using lights and sirens increases the chance of an ambulance collision by more than 50% and they should be used only when absolutely necessary.
In August, the Anchor reported that overall ambulance response times have slowed significantly in recent years in Harpswell. According to state data, median response times for all 911 medical calls climbed from between 12 and 13 minutes in 2016 to between 16.7 and 18.7 minutes in 2022-23. The figures varied by department.
Response times for emergency medical services in Harpswell were significantly higher than the median response times for volunteer departments across Maine, which have slowed in the last decade but have held steady at around 13 minutes since 2020.
Response time is measured as the time that elapses between an EMS unit being assigned a call by a 911 dispatcher and an ambulance arriving at the door.
In response to the Anchor report, department leaders cited a number of factors leading to slower overall response times, including a growing number of residents aging at home, a rising volume of calls for help, and a declining number of volunteer EMTs, ambulance drivers and firefighters.
The ranks of volunteer first responders are bolstered by the town’s paid firefighters, two of whom are on duty during daytime weekday hours, and by a paramedic stationed 24/7 at a garage on Mountain Road. Those responders often beat volunteer-staffed ambulances to an emergency to begin providing lifesaving care. Individual volunteers also may arrive before an ambulance if they respond directly to a call, rather than going first to their station.
And then there were the non-urgent calls, most of them for people who need help getting up. Last year in Harpswell Neck, for instance, “fall calls” accounted for 25% of all ambulance runs.
Also playing a role is Harpswell’s unique geography — a peninsula and three islands stitched together by narrow roads and wooded lanes — and the town’s growing appeal to year-round residents and summer people alike.
That popularity can make it tough for volunteer responders to get to the firehouse and into an ambulance when a 911 call comes in.
“In the summer, you can get behind a line of traffic and get slowed down on the way to the station,” says Mercier. “Particularly because we only have one road.”
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