Janice Fields wants you to trust that the best option for emergency medical response is to rely on an outside contractor for all EMS services in the southern part of town. We couldn’t disagree more. This week, one 911 call shows how contracting an outside service, and not managing it, can lead to life threatening situations caused by a delayed response. With paid services understaffed, the Township Committee refused to allow LCFAS to continue providing services to the degree they were able (3 shifts per week). Why wouldn’t we want as much coverage as possible? They are volunteers. It costs us nothing.

This EMS call took 24 minutes for an ambulance to arrive and 28 minutes for an ALS paramedic team to arrive. Advanced Life Support (ALS) is dispatched when a patient is in more critical condition and a paramedic is required to assist.

Despite a Bernards Township police officer making county dispatch aware of an address error within 2 minutes of the dispatch, the delay in getting an ambulance and ALS unit into town could have had a fatal result. Thankfully, it did not. We’ve been told there are incidents where Atlantic EMS has been delayed up to 50 minutes. Why are we as residents not informed about this?

As you cast your vote, you have a choice to make: Are you OK with excuses versus action? If you or your family need an ambulance, every second counts. Encouraging more local volunteers on our local squads is a worthwhile and potentially lifesaving investment.

We had an eyewitness and we sourced the radio calls to verify the time from this site: https://m.broadcastify.com/archives/feed/21399.