by Chief Michael Irwin
July 21, 2011

Last year Bannock County asked the voters for your support in increasing the tax levy for the ambulance district. The increase equated to approximately $15 per year per $100,000 of assessed valuation. The reason for the increase was because the response model for ambulance service in our county has not changed since 1978 – same number of ambulances and employees – but the call volume during this time has increased over 270%.

While the levy measure received over 58% of the vote, it had to pass with a 68% margin to become law. After the election, many residents commented they were not aware that the problem had reached this level. This was disappointing as we felt we had done a significant media campaign with newspaper articles, town hall meetings and television stories. Bannock County and the City tried so hard to get the message out, yet many residents were, and I believe still are, unaware of the situation we are facing.

Why does the City care about the County ambulance service? The City of Pocatello is the contract provider for ambulance service throughout Bannock County, and right now, we are on pace to see an increase of over 26% in calls for service between 2011 and 2010. This means we are at the point of not being able to immediately respond to every emergency call as it happens. Instead, we are “stacking calls.” When this happens, 9-1-1 dispatchers take your information, determine the priority from most critical to least critical, and then “stack” the least critical calls behind the most critical. How does stacking calls affect you? You may not get an ambulance or fire truck responding right away, and you will have to wait until a crew becomes available.

We are doing our very best to cover every County resident's ambulance needs, but we can no longer do it immediately every time. There will now be times when an ambulance cannot respond to your medical emergency right away, and there will be times when Pocatello citizens may not have fire trucks respond to fires, accidents, or other emergencies immediately.

Why would stacked ambulance calls affect fire service? To help offset the significant increase in ambulance calls, the City is utilizing fire crews to staff reserve ambulances. When the fire engine crew moves to the reserve ambulance, their fire engine is now out of service. Trying to respond to both ambulance and fire calls is rapidly depleting our resources. Even the crews we are calling in from their days off to help cover and the administrative staff members helping out –including myself – are all being sent out on calls, which leaves us with no one else to respond. We are and will continue to “stack calls,” and it appears this practice will only increase in the future.

I wrote this article on July 7, 2011, and in the seven days of this month, we had been without resources five times. We typically have averaged one instance per week, but there was a spike in April and May at almost twice per week. This month seems to be on track for many more times when we are completely out of resources to respond to your emergencies.

The ambulance levy question will be back before the voters in November 2011, and this is a plea for you, the voters, to seriously consider approving the levy measure this time around. In the meantime, the Bannock County Commissioners will be hosting a town hall meeting sometime in August to discuss the “stacked calls” issue. This will be a great opportunity for residents to express your opinion on what type of ambulance service you want in our county. I also encourage you to call me with your questions, whether you are from Lava Hot Springs, Downey, Chubbuck or anywhere in between. We serve all potential Bannock County ambulance service users.

Until something changes, the members of the Pocatello Fire Department will continue to do all we can to provide you with quality ambulance and fire service. We hope we will also have your patience while we work through the “stacked calls” as quickly as we can.