Grayden Brunet is the EMS captain of the Sackets Harbor Fire Company. He runs the all volunteer ambulance service, which is provided to the community for free. Its five EMTs, and five more people still in EMT school, answer 250 calls a year.

As it serves a community battling COVID-19, it's doing so as well.

What You Need To Know

  • The Sackets Harbor EMS Team does not get local funding or tax dollars.  It is solely funded by donations
  • The costs of answering calls, when you have to ensure the proper PPE protection of EMS responders, continues to climb
  • The department has started a Go Fund Me page to raise money, to ensure it can be around and answer calls close to home, rather than mutual aid - when response time can mean life or death

"We've had providers that have either contracted COVID, have been in multiple quarantines because of COVID, or are high risk and can't respond in the ambulance," Brunet said.

That's challenging for sure, but when you factor in the other aspect of COVID-19, it's been downright rough. Not only have calls increased, those calls have had COVID-19 related issues. It's not only putting people in harm's way, it is eating at an already thin budget. PPE alone is keeping costs impossible to contain.

"We've had to wear gowns, goggles, masks, and gloves to pretty much every call because right now, we're treating every patient as if they have COVID," Brunet said.

The reason the budget is so thin is there's absolutely zero funding. Sackets Harbor's Ambulance gets no government money, no tax dollars. It survives strictly on donations.

So to make ends meet in this crazy time, it's created a GoFundMe page to hope the community will keep it alive -- and ensuring it, and not further away squads - can respond to calls immediately, the difference between life and death.

"Our residents could be waiting up to sometimes 20 minutes for the closest mutual aid ambulance to respond and that could be a death sentence to some certain patients," Brunet said.

And it's not just money needed. If there is PPE anyone has any extra of, the squad here would take any and all donations right at the fire department.