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In
November of 1975 Southwestern Michigan Community Ambulance
Service was formed out of a need caused by the end of Gold Crown
Ambulance
Service and STAT Ambulance in southeastern Berrien County and
Southwestern Cass
County. Niles City, Buchanan City, Niles Township,
Buchanan
Township, Bertrand Township and
Howard Township formed the governmental agencies that came
together
to form SMCAS Ambulance.
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Good
cooperation and a willingness to donate time and
money selflessly made SMCAS Ambulance a success and subsequently
incorporated
in 1976. At first there were only a few volunteers but once the word
got out
the volunteers came and the service grew and flourished. In April 1976
there
were 30 volunteers. Of those 30 volunteers, 18 were Emergency Medical
Technicians (EMT), registered nurses or a combination of both. In
addition,
there were 12 with American Red Cross Advanced First Aid Training, 14
had
temporary attendant licenses, and another 22 volunteers were in a 40
hour
advanced first aid class. |
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volunteers worked in three eight hour shifts from
6 am to 2 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm, and 10 pm to 6 am. In March of 1976 Ken
Davis, an
EMT, worked at SMCAS for 354 hours or close to 12 hours each day within
a 31 day
span as a volunteer. Some of the
volunteers were couples, with the wife riding one night and the husband
riding
the next. People from all
walks of life
made this service including police, businessmen, secretaries, engineers
and
housewives. At first SMCAS
did not have
an ambulance base, so the units were stationed at volunteer’s
homes. They slept
on cots in the basements of the houses and at the Pawating Hospital in
Niles. |
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SMCAS
ambulance was one of the top three busiest
volunteer ambulance companies in the nation in the 70’s
running
in the
neighborhood of 3300 ambulance calls a year with a full volunteer crew!
In
1984 SMCAS went from a Basic
Life
Support
Service to an Advanced Life Support service. In
1986 SMCAS became a full time Advanced Life Support
service. Through
trial and tribulation in the late 1980’s and early
90’s
SMCAS survived and
became stronger and better than ever. With careful money management
through the
years, in 2003 SMCAS built a new ambulance base in Niles. In addition,
with top
of the line equipment and personnel, SMCAS has gone on to become one of
the
finest ambulance services in southwest Michigan. |
SMCAS
now has 19 full-time employees, and 14 part-time
employees. Of these, 14 are Critical Care Paramedics. All of our EMS
staff is
trained in BCLS, ACLS, PHTLS or ITLS, and SMCAS boast six Paramedic
Instructors. SMCAS is an active participant in the Primary and
Continuing Education
of all of the EMS providers in Southwestern Michigan and the Continuing
Education of many of the area’s Medical and Nursing providers. The
SMCAS motto, “We’re
Here to Serve“, still
rings as true today as it did in 1975.
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