County Ambulance District Will Join With Others To Establish Emergency Relief Team

Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance District personnel will probably be joining Stoddard and Scott counties’ emergency responders deploying to provide emergency relief in the event of hurricanes and other disasters.

“We’re going to try to partner up with them to try to get on the hurricane relief deployment teams, so when we get hurricanes hitting someplace, we’ll be dispatched out,” district director Kendall Shrum said at last Thursday’s ambulance district board meeting. “We’ll send a crew to help with the hurricane relief.”

The participation will not only provide a needed service but will also see the district amply compensated for it.

“It seems to be a pretty good revenue-maker for several of them down there [in southeastern Missouri],” Shrum said. “They’ve funded several projects by doing it.”

Stoddard County, North Scott County, South Scott County and Ste. Genevieve County ambulance districts would take part in what would essentially be a mutual aid agreement.

Individual employees would take part in the program on a volunteer basis, Shrum said.

“They pay from the time they roll out of the parking lot to the time they pull back into the parking lot,” Shrum explained. “They’re paid 24/7 at the regular rate here, then FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] reimburses us.”

Shrum said he has completed team leadership training as have the directors of the other three districts.

“We’re trying to keep it to where it’s a group that we know and that we work with,” Shrum said. “Stoddard’s going to send two [ambulances];  South Scott’s going to send two; North Scott’s going to send one; we’re going to send one.”

The task force would send a total of six vehicles, each with a crew.

Shrum said it would also deploy to tornadoes, such as the 2011 twister that struck Joplin.

“But typically, the hurricanes are the ones that get the big [responses] because they’re going to be out of hospitals,” Shrum said. “They’re running the whole time. It’s not sitting down there.”

The regional response team would travel and work together.

See complete story in the April 24 edition of the Herald.