PEA RIDGE — Retiree grateful

Dear Editor,

Thank you, Pea Ridge, for all the visits and gifts during Christmas at Autumn Place. The churches and groups came and sang.

The Pea Ridge fourthgraders made blankets for everyone, the Girl Scouts came and brought gifts and many others visited, whose names I didn’t get. A lady named Mae paid my bill at Fred’s one day when I misplaced my money. It was a joyous season, in delight of Jesus’ birth. Northwest Arkansas is the most charitable place I have lived.

Thank you.

WILLIE GRAFF Autumn Place, Pea Ridge, Ark.

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Thanks for help

To the editor:

I want to thank Robert Button for plowing out the drive and parking lot at Curves. What a wonderful young man. Debbie and I were shoveling and he stopped. I asked him what he would charge to clean it, and he said “What if I do it for free?” We still offered to just pay him.You just don’t find many people like that anymore, very IMPRESSED!

Thank the good Lord there are still good peoplein this world. Also Thomas Bise, my son-in-law, is like Robert he does alot for everyone. No one has a better son-in-law.

NORMA WILSON Pea Ridge, Ark.

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Considering ALS

It’s time to start a conversation in town - a conversation that can have a direct effect the lives of you, your family and friends.

Since Jan. 1, 2010, when the Fire Department merged with the ambulance service, its servicibility and operations have been greatly enhanced. With a quicker response time during the day, our citizens have experienced a more efficient emergency medical service than at any time in the history of the department. With a streamlined, modernized billing and accounting system, we’ve reduced our operations loss considerably, and been able to afford enhanced vital signs monitoring, and equipment that lowers the risk of injuring our patients and medical response team.

We are expanding the ranks of our trained medical response team to lighten the workloadand in preparation for an enhanced medical response capability that our community deserves.

The enhanced medical response capability I’m talking about is known as Advanced Life Support (ALS). An ALS capability greatly improves the chance of survivability for patients who experience severe trauma or cardiac events.

While a great many emergency ambulance services across the country are ALS licensed and certified, there are some that hold Basic Life Support (BLS) capabilities. BLS services can usually service a substantial amount of its callouts within its licensing and capabilities due to the majority of callouts not requiring ALS intervention.

The Pea Ridge Fire Department currently carries BLS licensing with the state Health Department and has had it since the early ’90s when several of its members wanted to improve the medical response capabilities. The system has worked great with automatic and mutual aid cooperation with surrounding ALS services. If our ambulance service receives a callout for certain conditions requiring ALSprocedures and intervention, we call upon either the Rogers or Bentonville fire department for assistance, meet them while en route to the medical facility, transfer the patient and their paramedics start the ALS procedure. The patient is then transported via the ALS service ambulance to the appropriate medical facility.

In 2010, we received 409 medical calls - 207 were treated by Pea Ridge Fire Department and 143 were not transported, either by choice of the patient, because the patient was deceased or a simple citizen assist was needed, not requiring further medical treatment. Of those, 59 of those calls were transferred to ALS. Of those 59, 43 were received from citizens inside the city limits, 16 were received from residents outside the city limits, but inside the unincorporated area within the Pea Ridge Fire Department response area.

Next time, I’ll cover some of the capabilities and limitations for both types of emergency medical services.

Thank You, FRANK RIZZIO, CHIEF, PEA RIDGE FIRE DEPARTMENT Pea Ridge, Ark.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 02/23/2011