By Heather Mullinix
Crossville Chronicle
CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Tenn. — Cumberland County is growing — and some of the emergency response departments are feeling the pains.
Mark Baldwin, 7th District commissioner, asked how the county’s emergency medical services department was handling response times, noting his family had waited 26 minutes for an ambulance following a relative’s medical emergency a few months earlier.
“My mom had to call back twice to make sure they hadn’t gotten lost ... I was told it was a busy day, but how often is that?” Baldwin asked during the July 31 meeting of the commission’s emergency services committee. “Is there anything we as a commission can do to help you out with that?”
Baldwin praised the paramedics, adding, “They’ve just been stellar.”
EMS Supervisor Chris Miller said the closest unit to the area Baldwin mentioned was on Plateau Rd., but closer to Interstate 40 than to the Rinnie community. And, ambulances sometimes have to cover other areas if another ambulance is in service.
“It’s just a big county,” Miller said of the ambulance coverage.
Miller told the Chronicle current response time from the time a 9-1-1 call is answered to an ambulance arrives on the scene is between 9 minutes 30 seconds and 9 minutes 45 seconds. The national average is 14 minutes.
But response times can be impacted when ambulances are on calls.
“If that truck in Crab Orchard is on a call and we have to come from Fairfield or from Station One [in Crossville], it’s going to take a long time,” Miller said of calls in the Eastern portion of the county.
There are nine ambulances on duty during the day and seven operate 24 hours a day. Miller said the department is fully staffed right now, though there are some employees out for military deployments. Since January, the department has responded to 6,900 calls. Of those, about 1,900 did not result in transport for additional care — typically due to patient refusal but also incidents where no patient is found at the scene of a call or behavioral issues. Those patients are often transported by law enforcement.
“We definitely need something. Whatever you guys give me, I’ll take,” he said.
Miller and Cumberland County Fire Chief Trevor Kerley have discussed adding an emergency services station in the area of Tabor Loop. That would move the ambulance currently stationed on Genesis Rd. to that area, providing coverage to the interstate and north side of the county. Kerley said that would also bring the Sunset Ridge development into the county’s fire fighting radius, reducing the ISO in that area.
ISO is a fire protection rating that impacts homeowner insurance rates.
The county will soon have the Flatrock Motorsports complex to cover, as well. Miller said the initial plan is to have an ambulance in the area when there are race events, but that ambulance will be available to take other calls in the area.
In addition to caring for patients from where they call for help to Cumberland Medical Center, EMS is often called to transport patients from CMC to other hospitals for care. That takes an ambulance out of the county for several hours.
And, Cumberland County is surrounded by other counties without hospital services.
Joe Sherrill, 6th District commissioner, asked, “If somebody’s coming in and using our resources, external to the county, maybe we put a surcharge on that.
“We definitely want to be good neighbors, but if it takes away Rinnie’s ambulance and it has nothing to do with our county — our job is to first take care of our county.”
Miller said there are protocols in place to avoid depleting the county’s resources.
“We do not go below a certain amount of ambulances that are in the county,” he said. “But we don’t like getting to that minimum because this is a huge county with a call volume that is increasing.”
Kerley shared the fire department’s calls for the first six months of the year. There were 162 fire calls during that time and 239 rescue emergency medical calls. There are also calls for hazardous conditions, service calls, “good intent” calls, natural disasters and other incidents.
Kerley said when he started with the department in 1993, they had about 400 calls in a year.
“You all pay me for 40 hours a week and I put in 60. I have for seven years,” Kerley said. “I get out of bed and go to every call. I’m getting old. I losing a bunch and it’s getting tiresome for me.”
The department continues to struggle with people. There are 10 full-time firefighters — including Chief Kerley. They work 24-hour shifts on a rotating three-day schedule. There are also 17 part-time position that work 12-hour shifts, providing coverage during the 8 a.m.-8 p.m. period that has the most calls.
But volunteers are down across the county. At its height, the department had a roster of 180 firefighters between paid and volunteer personnel. Now, they’re down to 113.
“We’re aging out,” Kerley said, pointing to some of the people who came to discuss the Rinnie Volunteer Fire Department building on Hwy. 127.
It’s a national issue, and Kerley thinks it has to do with a loss of a feeling of community. Some of the former Rinnie volunteer firefighters remembered how everyone would come out to help fight a fire.
“We’ve seen that all over,” Kerley said. “Even getting them to hire is something else.”
Volunteers have to meet the same training standards as the full-time firefighters.
Kerley had proposed hiring additional part-time firefighters and staging them at the volunteer fire departments with the largest number of calls to help improve response times. That proposal was not approved by the county budget committee.
Most calls for the fire department involve medical emergencies or traffic accidents with injuries.
Tom Isham, 2nd District commissioner, suggested the fire department should consider hiring firefighters with EMT or paramedic training. Kerley said the county would need to adjust its payscale to attract firefighters with those skills.
“I’ve got one that went through the class, but there’s no benefit other than he wanted it for his community,” Kerley said. “But for us to continue on, that’s going to have to happen.”
Sue York, 1st District commissioner, suggested a subcommittee be formed to discuss fire protection, including volunteer recruitment and department staffing.
“It sounds like it’s getting to be a problem,” York said.
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