
Hannah Kaufman – Morning Sentinel, Waterville, Maine
Dec. 1—WINSLOW — Fairfield’s primary rescue truck broke down last month, leaving the town in a scramble to provide local emergency medical services. Winslow’s town manager offered to loan their ambulance that is sitting unused, but misguided legal concerns about ambulance transport licensing shut down the deal.
The situation calls into question the efficacy of central Maine’s ambulance services and the role of political officials that oversee them. Even towns with their own independent emergency medical services must rely on an increasingly unreliable web of mutual aid as equipment ages and staffing shortages spread.
On Oct. 30, the town of Fairfield held an emergency meeting to discuss the failure of Med-One’s engine. Med-One, Fairfield’s aging medical truck that carries medical supplies, cardiac monitors, IVs and other equipment, is generally the first to respond to scenes, providing basic or paramedic services while waiting for EMS transport provider Delta Ambulance to arrive if transport to a hospital is necessary.
Fairfield has no ambulance or transport license of their own, meaning that they would be unable to transport patients even if they did have the proper equipment and vehicles.
The town’s backup emergency vehicles include Engine 3, a fire rescue pumper truck, and Chief Travis Leary’s SUV, a vehicle with such high mileage that it was retired from police service. Leary’s SUV is also too small to fit an EMS backboard, said Michelle Flewelling, Fairfield’s town manager.
With Med-One out of commission, both vehicles were forced to go on daily EMS calls for the last month, collecting extra wear and tear and stretching departments thin to cover medical services.
At the Oct. 30 meeting, the council voted to install a brand-new motor and other new parts for Med-One. They also voted to enter into negotiations for purchasing their own used ambulance, with Flewelling clarifying that this does not imply that Fairfield would establish a transport service.
But with no firm timeline on repairs to Med-One, inadequate backup vehicles and ambulance negotiations up in the air, the town needed a quicker solution.
The town of Winslow seemed to have it. Flewelling said that Fairfield officials reached out to Winslow about potentially borrowing their third ambulance, which sits unused, until Med-One is back in service.
“We knew it was a vehicle they weren’t using, and thought maybe we could borrow it just for a short period of time while we reviewed our options and got our vehicle fixed,” Flewelling said.
They thought wrong.
WINSLOW’S OFFER
Across the river, the town of Winslow runs its own EMS service and has three ambulances. Winslow officials discussed Fairfield’s request to borrow their unused ambulance during an Oct. 24 council meeting.
Town Manager Ella Bowman noted that Fairfield had previously lent Winslow a fire tanker in a similar situation about 15 years ago and said “it would be a mistake” to leave Winslow’s third ambulance sitting unused while Fairfield needs it.
“They have asked the town of Winslow to be able to use one of our ambulances to get them through this time period,” Bowman said. “I haven’t heard a timeframe on it but my guess is it would take up to a month.”
Bowman, along with Winslow’s Public Safety Director Leonard Macdaid and Deputy Fire Chief Michael Murphy, had met with Flewelling and Leary, and all parties had agreed that it was a suitable solution to Fairfield’s problem. Once it was brought to council, though, the proposal received instant criticism.
Councilors Fran Hudson and Mike Joseph raised concerns about the ambulance being used for transports, and the additional wear and tear that sending the truck outside of Winslow could cause, noting the ambulance’s age.
Joseph noted that Winslow’s ambulance service is not profitable and suggested the vehicle be used in town before being sent anywhere else, a change Hudson said has been in consideration for some time.
“If we lend them an ambulance that we’ve already got plans for using, they’re going to be driving 911, red lights and sirens, to multiple calls a day. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the ambulance itself,” Hudson said. “God forbid something happens to it, the insurance isn’t going to buy you a new one because it’s an older one.”
Hudson said Fairfield doesn’t have “a dire need” for the ambulance because the town is using Leary’s SUV for emergency calls. Councilors also questioned the legality of lending the ambulance to Fairfield, claiming that it is licensed as a transport vehicle, not a rescue vehicle.
“Our ambulances are licensed to be a transporting ambulance, which means you are licensed at the level to pick them up and bring them to the hospital. You get a different license to do a rescue call,” Hudson said. “They think they could use our ambulance because it’s already licensed as a transporting ambulance. Unless you get rid of our license and put a new license on it as rescue-only, you might want to look into that.”
Claims like that are how misinformation spreads.
Communication Breakdown and Councilor Confusion
Transport licenses are registered to the agency, not the vehicle. A non-transporting service can only have non-transporting EMS vehicles licensed to it, said Melissa Adams, licensing agent with Maine EMS.
Fairfield does not have a transport license, which means that they are unable to use any vehicle for transports, even if the vehicle was previously used by another department for that service, Flewelling said.
“Just because we had an ambulance at our disposal to respond to emergency calls, does not inherently give us the authority to transport individuals,” Flewelling said.
The town would have used Winslow’s ambulance the same way they had used Engine 3 and Leary’s SUV, but without some of the added complications of age and size.
After the initial meeting with Bowman and first-responder officials, everyone had been on the same page, Flewelling said.
“I had spoke with Ella, and she was aware that there was no way that we were going to do transport,” Flewelling said. “Deputy Chief Murphy used to work for Fairfield Fire for a very long time prior to becoming the deputy chief — he also knew that there was no way we could do transport. When we met with Ella, nobody ever thought that anybody would think we would do transport, because we understand how licensure works.”
Bowman confirmed this understanding at the Oct. 24 meeting. The Winslow council, including Hudson and Joseph, eventually stated that they’d support lending Fairfield the ambulance for 30 days, but postponed a vote on the topic over the same licensing concerns that Flewelling, Bowman and fire officials say don’t apply.
“I did have an in-depth conversation with Deputy Fire Chief Murphy and he didn’t mention any of the complications that you’re mentioning. He’s in full support of helping them out,” Bowman said.
NEIGHBOR AGAINST NEIGHBOR
It was only when Flewelling went back and watched the Winslow council meeting that she understood the scope of the misinformation.
“I thought it was odd that Winslow councilors would state the fact that, ‘Fairfield staff would just start transporting’ because we had an ambulance, and their concerns about our inability to know what the transportation licensing situation was and all of that,” Flewelling said.
At that point, Flewelling also received word that Med-One repairs would start Nov. 19. It was no longer worth the trouble to borrow Winslow’s ambulance, Flewelling said.
“So because of all of it, and also knowing that our vehicle was going to be fixed sooner than we initially realized, we decided that working with the town of Winslow just was not in our best interest,” Flewelling said.
Med-One was put back in service Nov. 22. The problem was fixed in the short-term, but the interaction between the two towns revealed a deep distrust where there was once solidarity, reliance and mutual aid.
And still, the seed of misinformation is sowed across towns and councils, watered and fed by Facebook posts and online forums, worming its way through the cracks of councilor relationships and blossoming right in the path of town proceedings.
“I’m not sure where the confusion came from,” Flewelling said.
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