I drove an Ambulance !

Today I got to drive an ambulance with the lights and sirens for the first time. I have been on the First Aid Squad in our town since January, and I have been working up to this since then. Min got me to join -- she has been a member for over a year now and is an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician), and she thought it was high time I did something useful.

In the US, most of the firefighters and ambulance crews outside of the big cities are all volunteers. So our town, like many, has its own First Aid Squad. We have 3 ambulances, a truck stuffed with all types of big lights, a regular car (with flashy lights) and a boat for river rescues. Because I work out of the house I am available during the day if there's a call, and very often Min is home and we go on calls together. Because Min is an EMT and I'm not, she's my boss. I get to carry stuff.

To be an EMT you have to attend a 120 hour class, have a 10 hour duty in an Emergency Room and pass a national exam. I'm signed up for my class in September.

So today the pager went off, and Min and I drove to the Squad building (she had no classes today and so was home). When all the people who responded got to the station I was the only one who had any ambulance driver training, so I got to drive. It was great fun being 'King of the Road' for 2 minutes or so. We only had half a mile to go to the accident, which was pretty spectacular when we got there. But no one was hurt, so after we checked out the drivers, we returned to base.

Yesterday Min and I went as part of a crew to a neighboring (sic) town to provide support for firefighters tackling a small brush fire. There was a much larger brush fire that had pulled away a lot of the resources of that town, so we were called for 'Mutual Aid'. We rushed over there with lights flashing and sirens blaring but no firefighter was hurt so all we did was sit there 'just in case' for a couple of hours. Here you see Min putting all her emergency medical training to good use.