As of today, the Winston-Salem Rescue Squad has effectively become a part of Forsyth County Emergency Medical Services.
The squad, founded in 1937, was the oldest in North Carolina. It was the last stand-alone rescue squad operating in the county.
The rescue squad's equipment now belongs to Forsyth County, and rescue-squad members -- almost 40 people, all volunteers -- have become Emergency Medical Services reserves. The reserves will continue to perform specialized rescue duties. But they will also be helping the EMS on many calls.
"It will give our people more opportunities to do things," said Raeford McHargue, the chief of the Winston-Salem Rescue Squad.
The county and the squad have been negotiating for months over the deal, which leaves the rescue squad technically intact but transfers its assets and membership to the county EMS. County commissioners approved the deal Dec. 21.
McHargue will remain chief as the squad moves to its new status under EMS. Squad members will continue to do basic rescue, and more complicated types of rescue that require special training: water rescue and recovery, for instance, as well as getting people out of wrecked vehicles, confined spaces or from high or low places.
Dan Ozimek, the Forsyth County EMS director, said that over time, both paid and volunteer fire departments have increasingly moved into the rescue field, taking on a lot of tasks except for the more specialized forms of rescue.
But people don't have to be rescued very often from the water or from high places or trenches. McHargue said that the Winston-Salem Rescue Squad used to handle 3,000 calls a year, and that all the rescue squads in the county may have responded to 10,000 calls. But now, he said, the squad might handle a little over 100 calls a year. The calls are about evenly mixed between human rescue, animal rescue and medical standbys, McHargue said.
The negotiations that led to today's rescue-squad change were harmonious, both county and squad officials said.
Ozimek said he knows that it was a difficult step, emotionally, for the Winston-Salem squad to take.
"You are talking about one of the oldest rescue squads in the United States," Ozimek said. "It has a lot of history and valuable assets and training that has been handed down from generation to generation. It is awful tough to go in a different direction now. They realize that in order for them to stay in existence and continue the legacy of the department that is the best way to go."
The rescue squad always received financial support from the county, but that amount had been declining. As the county faced its own financial squeeze -- and looked at the squad's decreasing call volumes -- commissioners cut an annual appropriation from $100,000 to $85,000, and this year whacked that in half to $42,500.
County Manager Dudley Watts said that the cut was taken with negotiations of a merger in mind but the county wasn't trying to force the squad's hand. Watts said that if the county hadn't worked out a deal, he would have requested more money for the squad.
With the county taking over insurance costs for the rescue squad today, that alone represents a big cost savings, officials said. The squad was spending $25,000 on insurance, but under the county's umbrella that cost will drop to about $3,000, Watts said.
Robert Myers, the president of the squad's board of directors, said that it was better to join EMS than to eventually fold. Besides, he said, the squad's equipment was paid for with county dollars.
McHargue said that during squad meetings no one opposed the change outright, although he could tell a small number "weren't crazy about it."
"Ninety percent of them said that it was best for the organization and the board was unanimous," McHargue said.
wyoung@wsjournal.com
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