Fire Chief: We Can Save Paramedic Service

The town’s Fire Department can decrease spend­ing by 4 percent and still maintain paramedic services in Norfolk, but the room to deal with contingencies will shrink dramatically, Fire Chief Coleman Bushnell told selectmen this week.

Dispatchers will have to make some emergency decisions because firefighters on a call will at times leave the firestation uncovered, Bushnell said. Maintaining local Advanced Life Support service depends on the Fire Department maintaining its cur­rent corps of 12 firefighters plus the chief, because state guidelines require a certain amount of round-the-clock coverage. Bushnell said he can absorb a 4 percent reduction in the Fire Department’s budget without laying off firefighters. “I guarantee you that we will have ALS coverage for another year, and then we’ll see what happens af­ter that,” Bushnell told selectmen this past Monday night. But without Advanced Life Support, Norfolk would likely have to rely on a private ambulance service that covers many communities and may not be able to get to Norfolk quickly, Bushnell said. And he said he doesn’t have much flexibility for unforeseen expenses in the proposed Fire Deaprt­ment budget for fiscal year 2011 (which runs from July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011). “As we move forward, the community needs to know that Plan B doesn’t exist in this budget, or in our overall operational scheme,” Bushnell said. “… We can’t say that we’re going to rely on mutual aid, because mutual aid is mutual.”