LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — The Livingston Manor Volunteer Ambulance Corp (LMVAC) was established in 1962, and since then has come a long way in providing critical emergency medical services to the community.

Of the 28 members, 18 are certified as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). Carl Huber is the oldest at 75, while 14-year-old Nicholas Rivenburg, of Manor’s Class of 2026, is the youngest.

Alex Rau, Sullivan County’s 911/EMS coordinator, is in his third year serving as president of the corps. He joined as a high school student, before graduating from the Home of the Wildcats in 1993. While studying to be a paramedic, he rode with the Liberty Volunteer Ambulance Corps and returned to his hometown a few years ago.

“We’ve had our ebbs and flows as an organization, but now we’re in a good place with a strong membership,” he said. “I think we’re fortunate, and we’ve worked very hard over the last four years or so to recruit members.”

Rau pointed out that the LMVAC focuses on training, with weekly drill nights. Members practice on 12-lead EKGs at the basic life support level. They work with i-gels, which are “an advanced airway device that rests at the top of the trachea allowing for better airway management during a cardiac arrest event,” Rau said. LMVAC is one of two squads in the county that are participating in a NYS pilot program to measure the efficacy of the device.

The members also practice with state-of-the-art stretcher power-load systems for the corps’ two ambulances—2016 and 2021 Fords.

What we all need to learn

The LMVAC offers a wide range of training to the community: adult/child/infant CPR and AED, basic and advanced first aid, overdose response and NARCAN use, “stop-the-bleed,” the use of auto-injectors, and bloodborne pathogen training.

In addition, the corps has created a double-sided emergency medical information sheet. Rau described it as “something to hang on your refrigerator,” designed to be added to every home in case of emergencies. It lists basic information, medical history, hospital information and current medical information, including medications.

“The good calls are the most memorable ones,” said Rau. “The little old lady who thanked us for holding her hand in the ambulance… I did my job.”

More need than ever before

The calls for medical assistance keep increasing: in 2020, the LMVAC responded to 272 calls; in 2021, 420; in 2022, 572; and according to Rau last year it was up to 902, many of which were “helping out our neighbors [with mutual aid] who are struggling… having trouble covering busy areas.”

Ralph Bressler, whose father Herman was a founding member of the Bethel Volunteer Ambulance Corps, serves as captain of the LMVAC.

“[Herman Bressler] would bring the ambulance home on a Sunday afternoon, a Cadillac station wagon, and my sister and I would wash it and make sure it was stocked,” Ralph Bressler recalled.

The younger Bressler has been involved with the LMVAC for several decades. “I always knew I wanted to volunteer, because my parents always emphasized that it was a choice between the ambulance corps and the fire department.”

Asked about the current state of volunteerism in EMS, he said that “Nationally there are problems, but Livingston Manor seems to be blessed with [active] members, and others that are looking to get into it.” 

He noted that in today’s hectic society, “It’s hard to get staff during the day because people have jobs they have to go to… We look to retired people, but that can be difficult.” 

Both Rau and Bressler discussed the problem that currently in New York State, fire and police are considered essential services, while volunteer ambulance corps are not—and thus are short-changed when it comes to bringing in revenue from a tax base.

“We see what volunteer ambulance corps means to a community when a community is without a volunteer ambulance corps, where they have to wait for somebody else, a paid service or another volunteer corps in the county to respond,” said Bressler.

“In many cases these are true emergencies, and it’s very frustrating when you have to call several corps through dispatch, trying to get them to respond… it can be a matter of life and death.”

Before joining the LMVAC 18 years ago, Mike Valentine was a member of a volunteer fire department.

“I joined for the camaraderie, to help people in town and along the highway, and to keep learning things in the classes, doing multiple things to help people in town,” he said.

“Locally it seems like we have a lot of people who want to volunteer, people not just wanting to sit back… We are family.”

A billboard outside the Livingston Manor Volunteer Ambulance Corps sums up the corps’ mission. It reads, “You Fall, We Haul.”