Kittson County Ambulance puts new rig into service

By Anna Jauhola
After years of needing an upgrade, the Kittson County Ambulance Service has a brand new rig. Thanks to donations from the Kittson Memorial Foundation Christmas letter campaign, plus some federal grant dollars, the ambulance arrived in early February.
Ambulance Manager Naomi Larson said she and the employees she oversees are so excited.
“We took it to Fargo on a transfer the other night and we went over the 3,000 mile mark,” she said. “It rides so nice and the cabinets are all glass, so you can see everything.”
While the now-back-up rig has extremely similar features, the new rig’s glass cabinets also have interior lights. Plus, the patient cot is on hydraulics, making it easier to load and unload patients.
For many decades, there’s been confusion about the ambulance service in Hallock.
Kittson County Ambul-ance is owned by Kittson Healthcare, so it operates as its own department. While emergency medical technicians and responders volunteer their time to be on call, they get paid an hourly rate if they go on an ambulance call and are paid through Kittson Healthcare. The ambulance is licensed and insured through the hospital, Larson said. The ambulance is also required to have a medical director, who is Dr. James Surdy, to sign off on any trainings.
“All our employees have to go through the hospital HR, get fingerprinted, do HIPPA training, etc., just like a hospital employee,” Larson said.
The ambulance service receives an allocation from Kittson County each year and also from each township it serves. That funding goes mostly toward supplies and equipment, Larson said. So there was little wiggle room to fund a new ambulance.
After trading in two old ambulances for $30,000, the final cost of the new rig was $210,000.
“I don’t know what we’d do without an ambulance in the county,” Larson said. “We’re usually the first to respond to an emergency call.”
Oftentimes, the EMTs make all the difference in saving a life. With that being said, Kittson County Ambulance Service currently has 18 active employees, including EMTs and EMRs (emergency medical responders). She’d like more and there’s always room for more.
“There’s no set number of how many EMTs or EMRs you can have,” Larson said. “The biggest problem is, this is not anybody’s main job. All of us have other jobs.”
Larson manages the Hallock Cenex Convenience store. Fortunately, her job is more flexible than most, but others’ jobs aren’t as forgiving.
“Everybody tries to pitch in when they can, it just gets hard sometimes even with that many people. The more people you have, the easier it is to fill a schedule,” she said.
The ambulance service is planning to hold an EMT and EMR class coming up soon. To become an EMR, there is less class time and no national testing. While an EMR can drive the ambulance, they cannot be in the back of the ambulance alone with a patient. They must be accompanied by an EMT.
The EMT class takes about four months, Larson said, and requires national certification. Also, EMTs can administer minor medications like aspirin, epipens, Narcan and glucose.
However, people who achieve either designation will be trained in basic life support such as splinting, CPR, using a backboard, bleeding and transferring.
Larson has been on the ambulance crew for the last seven years. She started as an EMR and later became an EMT.
“For years I thought about doing it and for years I didn’t do it,” she said. “But I should have done it sooner, just because I really, really enjoy it. It’s just helping people. I really enjoy helping them.”
She admits ambulance crew see hard situations too, and sometimes lose people, which is hard.
“But in the end, you know you did the best you could,” she said. “But, without the ambulance, they wouldn’t even have had a chance.”
Each year, Kittson County Ambulance typically goes on more than 200 calls. Those calls can vary from helping someone who fell in their home and couldn’t get up, to unattended deaths, and everything in between. She added, the ambulance crew is mostly women, and relies heavily on area fire departments for assistance with lifting patients.
“Our fire departments are great. We use them in every town to help with lifing and moving. They just show up all the time, so it’s nice to have them,” she said.
Anyone interested in being on the ambulance crew should know they’re making a special commitment. The cost of the class is covered by Kittson Healthcare, however, Kittson County Ambulance requires a deposit, so to speak, for the class. If a participant completes the class and is on the crew for at least one year, the check is ripped up. If they quit the class, that deposit is cashed.
“We want to make sure people are serious about doing it,” she said.
Anyone who is interested in becoming an EMR or EMT can visit with Larson or any member of the crew. Their meetings are the third Monday every month, which is also when employees receive monthly training to keep up certifications.

THE NEW AMBULANCE INTERIOR is much like the backup rig, but with brighter lighting and a newer features.
(Enterprise photo by Anna Jauhola)