Moscow Fire Station Short On Volunteers No Residents Sign Up To Take Latest Emt Training Course

Tony Catt started volunteering at the Moscow Fire Department when he was 16, cleaning fire truck bays and stocking supplies.

He knew he wanted to be a firefighter, but didn’t think he had the stomach for being an emergency medical technician.

Now the 20-year-old has earned the nickname Maverick, after Tom Cruise’s character in “Top Gun,” for going on 200 fire and ambulance calls in 1998.

“Sometimes your heart is going a million miles an hour, but you have to stay calm to make sure you don’t miss anything,” Catt said about the way he feels when he hears the four-toned ambulance call on the fire station radio.

With no community members signed up to take the EMT training course starting this month, volunteers fear there may be a lapse in ambulance service.

About 35,000 Latah County residents count on the 41 volunteer EMTs to provide immediate treatment and ambulance transport to Gritman Medical Center.

Catt, a part-time Lewis-Clark State College student, is one of 16 student firefighters and EMTs who live at the two fire stations.

The students are provided free rooms in exchange for being on call every fourth night to respond to fires or medical emergencies. The resident EMTs are often first on the scene, but longtime community volunteers such as Dave Uberuaga provide steady service during times when students are away.

From the window of his office where he sells Farmers Insurance, Uberuaga, 49, can see the flashing lights of outgoing ambulances. Many times during his almost 14 years as a volunteer he has turned away a client to respond to an emergency call.

“It can be very detrimental to business and I feel guilty sometimes,” he said. “But somebody’s got to do it. With the number of students in the department, there are lots of times they’re not around. It comes back on the shoulders of the long-term people who are here all the time.”

As a 20-year Moscow resident, Uberuaga often knows who lives at the addresses to which he’s dispatched. He is glad to be able to reassure them by his presence that they are in good hands, but worries the day will come when there will not be enough volunteer EMTs to do the job.