Glacier View volunteers cut response time in half

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

Response time to an emergency 911 call means everything to the caller and the first responder, especially in rural areas where distance is a major issue.

Greg Niswender, fire chief for the Glacier View Volunteer Fire Department, said the department has been able to cut the district's response time by half through a residential squad system, in spite of losing five trained volunteers over the past year.

Niswender said with the district's unique geography - a long, relatively narrow band running east-west along the Red Feather Lakes Road (County Road 74E) - it made sense to position smaller emergency vehicles strung out east to west and at the southern extreme at volunteers' residences. The fire department is located midway between the east and west boundaries.

"When we all reported to the station it took from 22 to 25 minutes to reach a call," he said. "Now someone, usually an EMT, is on scene in 9 to 10 minutes, better than half the time, with more volunteers on the way."

Niswender said when three automatic defibrillation units were donated to the department a few years ago, volunteers realized their response time in the case of cardiac arrest would mean life or death. There is a window of only 6 minutes between the time a heart stops beating and the defibrillator can be useful to restart it, he explained.

"With the three machines positioned in squad vehicles around the district there is a good chance we will save lives," he added.

"As far as I know," Niswender said, "no other fire department in the county does this. We are just particularly well suited. It is both a cheap and effective way for our department to respond quickly."

Niswender said the GVVFD, like most of the area's other rural volunteer departments, loses valued and trained volunteers each year through normal attrition and always needs more people to help share the load with the volunteers remaining.

Steve Robinson, fire chief at the Red Feather Lakes Volunteer Fire Department, said times have changed, and more area residents commute to work down the mountain and don't have time to commit to being a trained firefighter or EMT. "We are shorthanded, too, at present," Robinson said.

For further information about becoming a volunteer, call the local volunteer fire station and leave a message. The phone numbers are: Livermore VFD, 472-5592; Glacier View VFD, 493-3353; Red Feather Lakes VFD, 881-2565; and Crystal Lakes VFD, 881-3521.

Sue Hewitt, an EMT and volunteer with GVVFD, said the department has a higher than usual number of women volunteers--five out of 12--and four of those are half of a volunteer couple. "It's a great thing to do together as a couple and the department treats us very equally," she said.