At 83 years old, Rescue Chief Harvey Pough hopes graduates of a new class for emergency medical technicians will bolster the ranks of Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue and allow him to cut back from 60 hours a week.
Four students in the class, offered this fall on the Southern Maine Community College campus at Brunswick Landing, plan to join his squad once they pass the state’s licensing test. It would nearly double the number of EMTs in his department.
Another seven students plan to join the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department roster, which is great news for Assistant Chief Shawn Hall. The department currently has just five EMTs.
“We communicate (with each other) every time we leave the islands,” said Hall, who is also an instructor for the course. “We’re spread pretty thin.”
With only four EMTs on Harpswell Neck, Pough said he occasionally sees 100-hour weeks. Other volunteers regularly log 36 hours.
“I’m 83 and my second-in-command is 80,” he said. “Two of our four EMTs just aren’t going to last much longer going on 911 calls. Without the course, I don’t know what we would have done. Each of us is one bad call or serious illness away (from not being able to respond).”
The class is the result of local EMS officials’ appeal to a state legislator and her work to push for more flexible training opportunities. Both local officials and the legislator say long-term reform is necessary.
Harpswell provides emergency medical services and fire protection through a unique combination of volunteer and municipal services. The town supplements the efforts of three independent volunteer departments with a small staff of firefighters and a contract with Mid Coast Hospital to provide a 24/7 paramedic service.
The Brunswick EMT class began in September with 14 students, nearly all residents of Harpswell. Now weeks away from their final exam, students at a recent class ran through scenarios that included an allergic reaction and a methadone overdose.
Ted Merriman, a 58-year-old volunteer firefighter and ambulance driver with OBIFD, said he is taking the EMT class because he hopes to serve another 15-20 years.
In addition to the “huge tax savings” to the town, volunteer departments mean a neighbor shows up when you call 911, Merriman said.
“When Cindy Bessmer walks through the door and they say, ‘Hi, Cindy,’ the amount of anxiety drops through the floor,” he said, referring to a longtime OBIFD volunteer. “She’s probably the kindest person in the world.”
Rosie Buonaiuto, 23, a former firefighter with OBIFD, sees the EMT course as “kind of a way for me to get back into it to help out with EMS operations.”
She hopes the new volunteers will take some of the pressure off existing members — pressure that only compounds the challenges of a volunteer department.
“Those who do it do an amazing job, but because there are so few volunteers, so much falls on them and they get burnt out,” Buonaiuto said.
Short-term fix, long-term problem
Despite the new class, both Pough and state Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, say state EMS officials are failing to make training accessible for volunteers, who make up the bulk of local departments. Without training, they say, those departments are not sustainable.
Golek said she met with Harpswell EMS officials about the hurdles to training volunteers. She contacted Southern Maine Community College about starting a local class, but encountered several obstacles.
A change in state rules means classes are only allowed at 10 approved locations, Golek said. The nearest, at the college’s South Portland campus, is an hour from Harpswell.
Golek also found that only two spots in each class were held for volunteers, and the college has had trouble staffing the classes.
So, in March, Golek sponsored L.D. 969, a bill that would have directed Maine Emergency Medical Services to allow towns to offer training by a qualified person.
“Our volunteer EMS staffing is already dangerously low and will continue to decline, and local communities will continue to lose EMS coverage if we don’t find ways to address this issue,” Golek wrote in testimony submitted with the bill.
She pointed to a 2023 study by the University of Southern Maine that found that 15 of Maine’s 16 counties have “ambulance deserts,” where people live more than 25 minutes from an ambulance station.
Nearly 70% of Maine’s 340 fire departments are fully volunteer-run and another 24% are mostly volunteer-run, Golek wrote.
While the bill did not advance, Pough said a legislative committee was “fairly sympathetic” at a hearing in March.
“Our goal was to smack Maine EMS upside the head with a two-by-four,” he said.
The Brunswick EMT course is being funded by the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, a division of the Maine Community College System, according to Jim Whitten, dean of Southern Maine Community College’s Midcoast Campus.
“I’m grateful they stepped up,” Golek said, “but I feel like this is a short-term solution to something we need a long-term fix for.”
“Maine EMS is not responsive to the needs of volunteer programs,” Pough said. “It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that the administration of Maine EMS doesn’t do more to help us.”
The state, he said, focuses on the needs of “full-time, urban departments” with funds and time for training. Volunteers, who have separate work obligations, “can’t travel an hour four days a week to a distant location for training,” he said.
In an email, State EMS Director Wil O’Neal said Maine EMS has a “statewide commitment to EMS education.”
“With support from the State Legislature, and our Maine EMS Board, the Office of Maine EMS is providing unprecedented support for EMS education through the Maine EMS Stabilization and Sustainability Grant,” Cyr wrote.
Cyr referred to a grant that provided $31 million to stabilize the EMS system in July 2023, with funding for local departments and the state’s 10 training centers.
But Golek and Harpswell EMS officials would like to see Maine EMS allow communities to host their own classes.
“It wouldn’t create any safety issue,” Golek said. “We were doing it before. They’d still have to pass the national exam. It would just open up more for volunteerism in our EMS departments.”
Golek, a second-term legislator, said she can only submit emergency legislation in the session that begins in January, but she plans to run for reelection and will continue to pursue changes.
“If this isn’t a permanent fix, it’s definitely something that can be brought into the 137th Legislature,” she said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article online and on the front page of the December print edition incorrectly reported the source of funding for the Brunswick EMT class. The class was funded by the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, a division of the Maine Community College System.
