Staff Writer

It’s quiet at Cape Porpoise’s fire station.

Chip Howarth is filing paperwork at the main table when the scanner beeps. He doesn’t look up.

“I’ve been here 20 years, it doesn’t bother me,” he says and keeps filing.

Howarth has been a paramedic working at Kennebunkport Emergency Medical Services since he was 18. His father was a firefighter in the same building years ago. His family owns Bradbury Market across the street and his grandmother used to live next door to the station.

At the 24-hour ambulance service, many volunteers and per-diem staff are active members of the community who split their time between regular jobs and saving lives. With luck, many community members will never know them.

Chief Sue Stedman has been working with the department for 13 years and frequently stops in to check on how things are running; she works across the street at the Church on the Cape.

After 31 years working alongside the town, the program is facing a transition period, changing management, updating technology and even considering becoming a town department.

“We’re not doing it immediately. We’re looking at (fiscal year) 2012 as being the year to look to do this,”  said Town Manager Larry Mead.

Last year Mead and 11 other members of the community, town administration and KEMS staff formed a committee to better communicate what the service needs from the town. The committee’s review will reconvene in the next few months to continue talks on how to keep service costs down and provide the same level of care.

Stedman was appointed chief in January and immediately created the administrative position filled by Matt Leach.

Stedman now is in charge of recruiting volunteers and keeping her staff on schedule. Prior to  revamping recruitment efforts, the company had dwindling numbers. As of Monday, Stedman reported 12 new volunteer applications since the first of the year. She is still looking for more volunteers and will host an open house in June.

The company has an $800,000 endowment, set up like a capital fund, comprised of cash and stock donations made over the years. Howarth said the company wants to use it to buy a new ambulance, but the endowment is decreasing, even though calls have increased with Kennebunkport’s aging population.

Not all of the 352 calls the service answered last year were billable to either the patient or their insurance company.

“One-third of our calls are ‘non-transport’,” Howarth said, “We don’t bill for non-transports.”

“We’re a community service, we’re not going to bill grandma for picking her up (off the floor),” Leach said. “If people call us we go.”

For the fifth year, KEMS approached the town of Kennebunkport to keep the service alive.

Unlike previous requests, Mead said he didn’t have many questions about where the $109,000 requested would go and why the ambulance service wasn’t making more money. He already knew it needed more per-diem employees and that insurance payments, like Medicare, have gone down.

“We have to take what they give us. We get paid less from Medicare than we used to,” Stedman said.

During last year’s budget preparation Mead noticed the budget had increased annually, so he set out to understand the inner workings of the ambulance service better.

Not all calls happen during a lazy Saturday afternoon. The station is staffed at all times, even though most of the staff is made up of 34 volunteers and 11 per-diem paramedics, many of whom have second jobs working for other ambulance crews or other towns’  fire departments.

“You give back by helping people at their worst time,” Stedman said

Volunteers are paid a stipend of $1 an hour and $10 a call, but it’s not the wages that keep volunteers returning year after year, said Stedman.

“The stipend is just a thank you for what they do,” Stedman said.

University of New England medical students often volunteer. Some evenings, Stedman said they can be found at the station playing video games, taking naps or studying in the quiet environment. Stedman knows they are only here for a limited amount of time, but she’s thankful for every volunteer. 

Stedman entices volunteers to stay longer by setting up monthly training workshops with pizza, summer barbeques and a sense of community.

Training for emergency medical technicians is expensive and time-consuming: the first license level requires a four-month class and clinical time at a local hospital. After the class, technicians are certified in CPR and use of an automated external defibrillator, can administer aspirin and assist patients with inhalers.

It’s not only the long volunteer and training hours that keep people from shying away from joining the service, Stedman said.

“I feel like I’ve seen it all and done it all,” Howarth said.

But it’s helping the community that keeps Stedman and her peers coming back to work decades after their first ambulance call.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.