Hope is our fuel to a future. It grants our soul the opportunity to find joy in anticipation. It is an essential ingredient in adapting to life's unexpected course changes.
Within most small communities there are a few common established institutions including churches, a school, a library, a post office, fire, EMS, PD, a business presence and some sort of repository for local government.
But to truly be a community, residents must serve or participate in these institutions. It is a requirement for membership. Each institution carries out a series of tasks or activities, but bring to the community a greater or larger quality.
The school seeds fertile minds through daily learning pursuits, but for the community the schools maintain a foundation and value in knowledge. The police provide security, but also a larger community influence of peace. Libraries are pharmacies for the mind that prescribe the right information for those who yearn to expand insight but also instill wisdom to benefit the community. And the churches provide understanding, meaning and in a larger sense principle.
Most of these organizations provide opportunities to make a locale more than just a gathering of dwellings and businesses -- the purpose provided in serving define a community.
Over the past seven years I've had the privilege of working with the local volunteer EMS and then the Fire and EMS combined. My contribution is limited as Information Officer, but much like the majority of my work-life it allows me to continue being an observer.
Volunteer Fire and EMS departments are unique to the institutions of small communities. They are people from a full spectrum of ages, backgrounds, careers and experience. They require a dedication that is unique. Before even starting to serve, EMTs and firefighter need well over 100 hours of training for both disciplines. And training is ongoing to stay current. In addition to the formal training, the true tests happen with real situations in the field.
Emergency services require a volunteer frame of mind outside of the typical. Unlike most other organizations, the schedule is determined by the needs of others or the situation.
It is a commitment to community where members are willing to say "we're here to help at any time - just call us." People leave their jobs, their homes and family, their projects, their beds in the middle of the night and go to help...some person - another community member or a complete stranger who is sick, injured or in danger.
The idea of being a participating community member more than simply living in a local dwelling, paying taxes, keeping your lawn mowed.
Fire and EMS people demonstrate this commitment tangibly many, many times a year.
And what do they do? In an organized manner they rapidly assemble and answer calls. Often they go to motor vehicle accidents which require delicately separating crumpled humans from crumpled metal, providing immediate medical expertise on the move to a destination of recovery. They rescue people from the depths of waterways and the heights of silos and grain bins.
At a fire scene the safety and wellbeing of others is primary, then continue to save property and possessions, often at potential personal risk of peril. Everyone knows their part, played out like a tight jazz group that improvises as they need to, yet everyone knows where the song is going. The goal is the same - to save people and then protect property.
So they do all that. They do rescue cats in trees, walk into infernos, bring back the injured or ill from the brink of a permanent farewell, mend wounds, take programs to the schools, support community causes. They head out in blizzards and ice storms to accidents when no one should have been on the road in the first place. They spend 10 hours fighting and finishing a barn fire on a day of 90+ degree heat and equal humidity. They face hazardous materials that could make your skin fall off, and attend to injury accidents that would make your skin crawl.
What is the larger element this institution brings to the foundation of a community? They deliver Hope.
There are few sounds more deafening than the silence immediately after a vehicle collision. It is the sound of despair. But then the silence is broken by the sound of sirens from an approaching EMS rig and fire engine - it is the music of hope.
Anguish during an out of control kitchen fire is interrupted by renewed hope that it won't cost the whole house when firefighters confidently step in and quell the blaze.
Helplessness, felt by new parents when their newborn, who had been running a fever, started convulsing, is stilled by hope when experienced EMTs arrive with assurances that they've seen it before, then help the child's condition to improve even before reaching the emergency room.
Hope is the first element in returning order from chaos. Hope is the tangible assurance that a community will maintain a past, feel safe in the present and be confident in a future. As long as people are willing to make this commitment to neighbors and their community...there is hope.
Best to all,
Lloyd
