Workers compensation claims can be complicated. One couple is working from personal experience to raise awareness about the extreme challenges facing volunteer firefighters injured on the job.

Art and Nancy Hudson were forced to hire a lawyer and endure several appeals over nearly 18 months after Art was denied compensation for medical bills due to him going into cardiac arrest while responding to a call.

The couple is now working with local representatives and taking their case to the New York State Court of Appeals in the hopes that no one has to go through what they have experienced.

“He said ‘oh, it’s a chimney fire,’” said Nancy Hudson of the night her husband Art was injured. “‘These things can get away from you. I better go,’ and indeed that night, it got away from all of us.”

Nancy Hudson says that night when Art left for a routine call, she never imagined her daughter would receive a call that an on-duty injury that Nancy had heard come over the police scanner in their home was her husband.

“She called my daughter and said ‘Mommy, it’s papa,’ ” Hudson said.

Art’s heart had stopped, and he went into full cardiac arrest. His life was saved by his fellow firefighters.

The family has now been locked in a bitter fight for workers compensation for more than a year, but Art’s passion for serving his community hasn’t waned.

“This happens to be our newest member, this truck,” he said on a tour of the station.

He says he’s now on light duty, servicing the department’s trucks, but serving the community nonetheless.

“I love doing this,” he said. “It’s community, it’s like everybody else that volunteers.”

Nancy says they found that while the town had a workers compensation program, their contractor determined that Art’s cardiac arrest wasn’t directly related to the hose that he was carrying at the time, and they were denied. After hiring a lawyer, multiple subsequent appeals yielded the same result.

“So we’ve spent the last 17 months and one week — not that I’m counting — getting denials from worker’s comp,” she said.

Mark Delasin, president of the Marcellus Fire Department, says the system is broken, and firefighters are paying the price for an inherently dangerous job that they are doing on a volunteer basis. He stresses that many people aren’t aware their local fire department is volunteer in the first place, or that the fact that they aren’t full-time employees is what makes the process so complicated.

“There’s so many different things going on with a volunteer that you wouldn’t see with standard employment,” he said.

This, Hudson emphasizes, is even though they are putting themselves in harm’s way to protect others.

She says she hopes their efforts, including working on legislation with Democratic State Senator John Mannion’s office, will make life easier for volunteers who are not retired like Art is, and will need compensation for wages at their primary jobs, in addition to medical bills.

“They could never wait the 17 months that we’ve waited,” she said.

As the clock continues to tick, she stresses that they intend to keep pushing, with those younger volunteers, the same ones who saved Art’s life, in mind.

“They are the ones that need credit for his life,” she said. “He’s doing this for them, because he doesn’t want them to have to go through this.”

Both bills are still in committee as the Hudsons await their appeal. They have contacted and met with other legislators in the area as well while gathering support from other organizations geared toward supporting firefighters.