North Adams Ambulance Headed for Dominican Republic
 Unit 4 is retiring to the Caribbean, where it will service rural communities along the Haitian-Dominican border. |
"It's going to service 20,000 people down there," said the service's manager John P. Meaney Jr. on Monday of the donation of the agency's reserve truck. "From what I understood, they've been using pickup trucks and other means to get people to this clinic. They've been looking to get an actual ambulance for quite some time. It's too old for us to use now so at least they'll get a couple years out of it."
The donation of the 1994 Road Rescue truck from North Adams to small communities along the Haitian-Dominican border in the province of Elías Piña came after a volunteer working with a grassroots community development group on the island nation stumbled on a website the service set up for Haiti earthquake victims. Or maybe it was providence.
"I don't believe in coincidence," said Jessica Coffelt, coordinator of American relations for FUMSIL, a nonprofit Catholic organization of Haitians and Dominicans working to make their communities better. "God is so good."
The ambulance began its career in sleepy Bethel, N.Y., best known as the site of Woodstock; it was traded in to a company in New Jersey, where the North Adams service picked it up in 2008 when it was looking for a fast replacement after fire claimed one of its trucks. Since then, the service has added two brand-new trucks and recently bought a 2006 Braun from Southern Berkshire Volunteer Ambulance as a new reserve vehicle.
About the time Meaney was discussing buying the Braun, Coffelt was wondering where she was going to get an ambulance for rural El Llano. She had been at a meeting with FUMSIL leaders and the local government talking about programs and goals for 2011. At the top of the priorities was an ambulance.
"The hospital is only 10 minutes away but everybody is living in poverty," she said. "It's so close but it's so far away. People are dying of things like dehydration and heart attacks. People are dying of these because there's no transportation to the hospital."
She had no idea where to get an ambulance so she began googling. Her first call to a distributor was disheartening. Ambulances go for more than $100,000, he told her, and it was unlikely anyone would just give her one. Then she added "Haiti" to her search and found the page set up for the service by Michael DiLego of Samara Logic to solicit disaster aid.
"When I called John, it wasn't for an ambulance but I thought maybe he'll know someone who'll help us," she said. "And then John said,'it's so funny that you called because I think I have an ambulance.'"
Indeed, the ambulance service was wondering what to do with its oldest vehicle, which has 65,000 miles and is valued at about $5,000.
"Maybe an hour after we decided we were going to be doing this, this agency FUMSIL [called]," said Meaney. "They were looking for a vehicle, an ambulance ... ."
And so Meaney and emergency medical technicians Amalio Jusino, Kory Richardson and Robert Dobbert, who all helped get the preparations going and are volunteering their time, set off at midnight on Monday to meet up with Coffelt at the port of Miami on Wednesday. Building Bridges of Hope of Michigan, a faith-based nonprofit, is underwriting the cost of delivering the vehicle, including a rental car for the trip back, and shipping it to the Dominican Republic. It will be filled with medical supplies in Miami, which was the cheapest to ship from.
Once it's delivered, the local government will train technicians and operate the ambulance to cover some 23 rural communities along the border. More than half of the population is of Haitian descent and many earthquake refugees have come to the region. The 15-year-old FUMSIL, or Fundacion Mariana San Isidro Labrador, is the sole source of medical care in the district, among its many other programs.
The ambulance Web page Coffelt found was online within 72 hours of the earthquake last year. It raised about $1,000 and resulted in some medical supply donations, not enough for a shipment but they'll now head to the island with the donated ambulance. DiLego, who contributed some of his time to get the site up and maintained, was pleased his work sparked the connection between the ambulance service and FUMSIL.
"It's excellent, because that's what the site is all about," he said. "It's always nice to do a nice job and get a pat on the back kind of thing but to reach people who truly need ... well, this is a true need."
