Bayville First Aid Squad Members Concerned About Paid EMS Ordinance

Seventeen-year-old David C. Wright and his friend had hitched a ride on that late summer night back in July 1954. It would turn out to be a fatal mistake for one of them.

The boys were on their way to their summer homes in the Holly Park section of Bayville. But they never made it. The car they were riding in collided head-on with another. David's skull was fractured.

Residents and police began a frantic rush to get him to Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood by car. There were no first aid squads in Bayville on that night nearly sixty years ago. There was no Community Medical Center, no Southern Ocean County Medical Center. Kimball was the closest.

David died the next day. And the Bayville Volunteer First Aid Squad was born.

Squad members have been answering calls ever since. And they want to keep answering them for as long as they can.

But current squad members came out in numbers to the Sept. 23 Township Council meeting. They were upset over what they said was a lack of notification about an ordinance that establishes procedures for a paid EMS Division in Berkeley.

"We are not opposed to the ordinance being presented tonight," senior squad trustee Bob Laird said.

Laird said squad members had learned over the weekend that the ordinance was slated for a public hearing on Sept. 23.

"It immediately threw our group into a panic," he told the council.

Both Laird and another squad member who spoke from the audience said it had been several years since township officials had discussed possible paid EMS services with the Bayville squad.

"It was five years ago and I was the captain," the man said loudly.

An angry Township Council President James J. Byrnes disagreed and said the meeting had taken place more recently than that.

"You guys said 'we can handle it,' " Byrnes said.

Laird then said there were two ways to handle the discussion.

"We can do it by cooperating with each other or we can do it by hollering at each other," he said. "We feel there are portions of that ordinance that could potentially put us out of business."

Berkeley already has paid EMS personnel on duty in Holiday City during the night hours. The move came after Holiday City squad members told township officials they had a shortage of volunteers.

Laird said he could eventually see that happening with the Bayville squad as well, but not now.

"All of us know volunteer squads are declining rapidly," Laird said. "That's going to happen."

Both Byrnes and Township Councilman L. Thomas Grosse Jr. said that was not the intent of the ordinance.

"It's our obligation to take care of the town, regardless of people's feelings," Grosse said. "No one wants your toes stepped on. But if there was a problem with your squad in the future, we would have to do something."

"It's not going to happen unless there's an absolute, desperate need," Gross added. "The town comes first."

"It's not a takeover," Byrnes said.

But Laird insisted the ordinance - which the council later adopted unanimously - came as a "complete surprise."

"We thought at the very least we would be a part of the discussion," he told the council."

The ordinance calls for the township and police department to administer and coordinate emergency medical transport services "as a supplement" to volunteer rescue squads.

The ordinance also establishes an $800 fee for transport, which includes two EMTs, basic life support and ambulance transport to Kimball, Community, Ocean Medical Center, Centrastate and Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

It also includes charges for mileage, oxygen and other medical items during the transport. The township will bill only Medicare or a patient's private insurance carrier for the services.

Residents will not have to pay any leftover balances, and residents without medical coverage will not have to pay anything, according to the ordinance.