Murrysville-area emergency responders get more than $100,000 for covid-related expenses
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Millions of dollars in grants are on the way for Pennsylvania’s fire departments and ambulance agencies struggling through the coronavirus pandemic.
About 90 Westmoreland County fire departments are getting more than $2 million. Fourteen EMS agencies in the county are set to receive about $210,000 total.
That includes Murrysville Medic One. As a group performing both paramedic and rescue work, they will receive two grants totaling more than $35,000, which director Darrick Gerano said will be a massive help.
“Whenever covid started, I think we experienced about a 35-40% decrease in call volume,” Gerano said. “It was due to what people were being told by the government about staying home. A lot of people were waiting to call (an ambulance) until it was too late, because they were worried about having to go to a hospital.”
Responding to calls is how the agency makes money in order to function. And on top of that, those functions now include donning exponentially more personal protective equipment, or PPE.
“We’re going through a lot more than we were this time last year,” Gerano said. “It used to be very minimal, where now everything is maximized.”
Gerano said that even with grant money in hand, there is still the issue of maintaining a steady supply.
“The supply is just not there,” he said.
On the flip side of the emergency services coin, White Valley VFD Chief John Bohinc said that while his company hasn’t had to burn through piles and piles of PPE, its budget took a different kind of hit.
“Other than vehicle accidents, we’re not interfacing with the public as much as the medics are. We try to strategically distance ourselves from those situations,” Bohinc said. “The biggest thing is we lost about $15,000 we’d normally get from fundraising.”
When statewide quarantine measures took effect just as fire-department fish-fry season was taking off, fire companies across the region saw a steady annual revenue stream begin to trickle away.
“We basically had the rug pulled out from under us,” Bohinc said.
White Valley VFD will receive a grant of just over $24,000.
And while a good year of fundraising would put the Export Volunteer Fire Department over the roughly $23,500 grant for which it was approved, Chief Stephen Opsitnick Jr. said every little bit helps.
“I don’t care if we get a grant for $3,000,” he said. “What also helps us is we have a great deputy chief in David Silvis who really works hard going after grants when we see them available.”
For many emergency agencies, all aspects of their jobs have been affected in some way by covid, Gerano said.
“We go to get a vehicle worked on, there’s a delay because of covid,” he said. “Reimbursements are delayed, because of covid.”
The grants, he said, will allow emergency responders to work without the constant worry about how to pay for necessities like vehicle maintenance and utilities.
“What these will help us do is function better from an operational standpoint,” Gerano said. “It’ll help us with the massive amount of PPE we go through, along with the cleaning supplies and other things.”
Local grants
Emergency responders in the Star’s coverage area received the following grants through the federal CARES Act:
• Delmont Volunteer Fire Department: $22,603
• Export Volunteer Fire Department: $23,425
• Murrysville Volunteer Fire Company No. 1: $23,973
• Sardis Volunteer Fire Company No. 1: $24,931
• White Valley Volunteer Fire Department: $23,151
• Murrysville Medic One: $22,603 and $13,8786