Ambulance Association needs help

Residents of Sweden Valley Manor did their Christmas shopping on Saturday. This year's Christmas Bazaar featured everything from rum cakes to handmade crafts. Above, Linda Knowlton (right) found an eager customer for her Avon products. At right, Anne Davenport-Leete welcomes shoppers to her table of hand-made crafts. The bazaar allowed manor residents to do their shopping without leaving the comfort of home.

Residents of the Coudersport area recently received an important piece of mail: an invitation to support an organization that provides a critical service, but is taken for granted by many.

Coudersport Volunteer Ambulance Association (CVAA) provides pre-hospital health care in the Coudersport area. It's also the parent organization for a paramedic service that covers all of Potter County and some adjacent communities: Coudersport Regional Advanced Life Support (CRALS).

These are the people that come to your house when you are seriously injured or sick to take you to the hospital. They come to the scene of automobile accidents, farm accidents, and house fires. They come to help with a diabetic emergency, a bad reaction to a bee sting or food allergy, or a heart attack.

CVAA is made up of both volunteers and paid personnel. The paid two-member crew covers the weekday, daytime shifts and maintains the business office during the week. The volunteers answer ambulance calls at night and on weekends, as well as some weekday shifts.

CRALS provides a paid, 24- hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week paramedic service. There are currently three full-time and five part-time paramedics.

Volunteers respond any time, day or night, in any weather. Far from being a glamorous job, the work is often physically and emotionally hard.

EMTs and drivers spend many hours in training, raising funds, maintaining equipment and otherwise operating both CVAA and CRALS.

The mail that was recently sent to all residents of the Coudersport area is an invitation to participate in the organization's subscription drive. It also contains information about a CVAA effort to sell markers that make it easier to identify places of residence.

Skilled professionals and dedicated volunteers make things run smoothly for the Coudersport Volunteer Ambulance Association. Among those on staff are (from left) Business Manager and EMT Chris Heimel, Paramedic Jim Plant and Kelley Bobbett, an emergency medical technician.

Anyone who has not received a subscription notice but still wants to support CVAA should call 274-7411.

"Many people are unfamiliar with the economics of emergency services, particularly when they involve a mixture of volunteers and paid employees," said Linda Williams, president of CVAA and CRALS. "If you require services, your insurance carrier may only reimburse the ambulance service a portion of the fee, but our subscribers will only be responsible for any deductibles and/or co-pay amounts. Non-subscribers may be responsible for the full amount of the bill."

In addition, a subscription with CVAA does not cover care provided by the CRALS paramedics. That is billed separately.

"The volunteers of CVAA are currently covering a large portion of the costs of keeping CRALS running," Williams explained. "Revenue from CRALS does not come close to meeting the expenses of supplying the service. Each year, the volunteers of CVAA have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to keep CRALS operational."

Neither CVAA nor CRALS receives any revenue from local, county or state taxes.

"If we can spread out our expenses so that a larger number of people become subscribers, we can meet our expenses and keep the rates lower for everyone," Williams said. "We welcome paid subscriptions as well as any financial contributions. Additionally, volunteers are needed in all aspects of the business."