Ogdensburg Volunteer Rescue Squad Inc.

05/31/2026

Thank you! During the first two weeks of the 2026 Annual appeal, the following donors have donated $9,685.00 to help us provide better Emergency Medical Service to you.

Richard K. Dillenbeck, Robert Lovely, Mr. & Mrs. Ed Hackett, Barbara Quirk, Ken & Peg Chambers, Mary A. Rafferty, Douglas Alan Yates, John & Nancy Bateman, Janis Woodward, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Hart, Jane Basta, Dean & Diane Hebert, Karen & Ron Bettinger, Richar & Ann Groome, Tammy Carr, Christine Thomas, Jocelyn Walker, Kevin & Tracie Kroeger, Dr Edward & Linda T. Smith, Mr. & Mrs. Peter Montpetit, Judith A. Simmmons, Mr. robert a Beauchamp, Lawrence H. Vielhauer, Jamie Sovie , Carol L. Vielhauer, Mrs. Pam Luckie, Kathleen E. Bowser, Mrs. Shirley Burns, Marie Therese Kelly, Melissa Lalonde, David P. Ford, Elmer Cougler, David W. bush, Marie E. Craven, Brenda Lalonde, Physllis Dailey, Liz & Paul Congleton, David Pierce, Gary R. & Cheryll Keller, John Poorman, Mrs. John Massic, Claudia Mayhew, Daniel Pearson, Michael Elliott, Susan J. Catlin, Sheila Bouchey, Joseph J. Peccolo, Patricia Campanella, Terry R. & Martha M. Clark, Joseph Yoder, Ellen Bova, Tamara Wilson, Jim Flounders & Joyce Hutchnson, Nancy Benz, Jane E. Whitcombe, Robert & Susan Dirks, Sisters of St Joseph, Margaret Langley, Mr. & mrs. Joseph E. Tracy, Mary Wills, Linda & Gary Fenlong, Lillian E. Lewis, Bonnie & John Churco, Nicholas Bertrand - Bertrand's Construction, Richard F. Platt, Steven & Sharon Grant, Paul A. Kennedy, Laura Irvine, Rita & Jim Crowley, Ellen J Weir, Amy & Christopher Preston, Thomas & Kathleen Lawrence, Phil & Mary Cosmo, F. Naccarato, Kenneth Walsh, Lee A. Murray, Arthur B. Davison, Carolyn Thew,

If you haven't yet made a donation, please consider d**g so today. Our volunteers and employees are there for you.

Annual Appeal Donations can be made by paypal using the following link.
https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=3JGHSAFLFSFRN

05/23/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/17VWbifahx/

As EMS Week comes to a close, I hope we don’t rush past what this week is really supposed to honor.

Not just the trucks.

Not just the uniforms.

Not just the calls that make the news.

But the people who keep showing up when the rest of the world is falling apart.

EMS is hard in a way most people will never fully understand.

It is missed holidays, cold meals, interrupted sleep, heavy scenes, long nights, and quiet drives back to quarters after calls that don’t leave your mind as easily as they leave the radio.

It is holding yourself together because somebody else needs you calm.

It is walking into chaos with a job to do, even when your own life is heavy too.

And EMS does not only touch the person wearing the uniform.

It touches the spouse who checks the clock.

The child who asks when mom or dad is coming home.

The family who learns to celebrate around shifts instead of dates.

The people at home who love someone in EMS and quietly carry pieces of this job too.

So much of what EMS does will never be measured correctly.

There are no awards for the calls no one talks about.

No headlines for the patient who felt less alone.

No report that can fully explain what it costs a person to keep giving pieces of themselves to strangers.

And sometimes, the hardest part is never knowing the ending.

You may never know if they made it.

You may never know if the family found peace.

You may never know if your words, your hands, your calm, or your presence changed the outcome.

But it mattered.

It mattered on the highway.

It mattered in the living room.

It mattered at 3 a.m.

It mattered when someone’s worst day needed somebody brave enough to answer.

EMS is more than a profession.

It is sacrifice.

It is service.

It is humanity under pressure.

And behind every badge, patch, radio, and pair of tired eyes is a person who deserves to be seen, thanked, and reminded that what they do still matters.

Happy EMS Week to the ones who keep answering the call.

We see you.

We appreciate you.

And we know the world is better because you show up.

~ Lizzie, Medic Humor

05/21/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Dv66vE1wt/

Every time I hear somebody from a big city talk about self-driving ambulances, I immediately know that person has never backed a truck down a muddy dirt road outside Helena while a naked m**h head tried to fistfight a mailbox.

These people think rural EMS is just urban EMS with more cows.

It ain’t.

City EMS runs on infrastructure.

Rural EMS runs on experience, caffeine, duct tape, and whatever guardian angel watches over idiots driving emergency vehicles through Delta fog at 3 AM.

Folks in urban areas think technology solves everything because they got traffic cameras, streetlights, GPS, multiple hospitals, and enough backup units stacked on top of each other like a fire department mating ritual.

Meanwhile in rural Arkansas, dispatch might literally say:
“Y’all know where Billy Joe's barn used to be before it burned down in 1997? Turn left there.”

That’s the map.

That’s the whole dispatch information.

And half the time the address still ain’t right.

People keep talking about AI and automation like every ambulance service in America looks like some futuristic science fiction movie.

Buddy, some rural EMS systems are one broken printer away from collapsing into the Mississippi River.

Most country EMS agencies don’t even have CAD systems.

Some still use paper run sheets, radios older than the paramedic students riding third man, and a whiteboard held together with dry erase marker stains and generational trauma.

But somehow we still get the job done.

Because human beings adapt.

That’s what Silicon Valley doesn’t understand.

A computer follows rules.
A country medic survives chaos.

There’s a difference.

A self-driving ambulance might work halfway decent in downtown Memphis where every road is mapped, lit up, and monitored by seventeen cameras and a guy named Trevor drinking 7 Brew latte in a traffic control center.

Try that same nonsense outside Marianna during planting season.

That ambulance gonna meet a tractor wider than the road, two loose dogs, a flooded bridge, and somebody’s drunk uncle hauling a washing machine with bungee cords on a trailer tire that expired during the Clinton administration.

And then people say:
“Well the technology will improve.”

So did self-checkout machines and those things still have emotional breakdowns if you scan the bananas too aggressively.

Now imagine trusting that same level of technology with meemaw having a stroke on Highway 1 while the nearest backup unit is forty minutes away because half the county trucks are tied up babysitting nursing home transfers.

I’m not against technology.

I love better monitors.
Better radios.
Better mapping.
Safer trucks.
Anything that helps us do our jobs better.

But assist us is the key phrase.

Because rural EMS is not predictable enough to automate.

You cannot program instinct.

You cannot code the moment a medic walks into a trailer house in Brinkley and immediately knows somebody is circling the drain before the monitor even powers on.

You cannot replace experience earned from twenty years of bad roads, worse coffee, and hearing “patient is alert and oriented” right before somebody tries to bite your partner like a raccoon trapped in a feed bucket.

These corporate folks see EMS as numbers on spreadsheets.

Response times.
Coverage zones.
Operational efficiency.

Meanwhile real rural EMS is:
“Well… the bridge is flooded, the GPS is lying, the patient weighs about the same as a riding lawn mower, and Bubba’s emotional support raccoon keeps attacking first responders.”

Good luck automating that.

Truth is, country EMS still depends on human judgment because the countryside does not care about algorithms.

The Delta will humble technology quick.

Especially technology designed by somebody whose biggest hardship this week was did 7 Brew get their coffee order correct.

What do y’all think?

Could self-driving ambulances ever survive real rural EMS?

And rural crews… what’s the most ridiculous place GPS has ever tried to send you?

Tag your partner who already knows they’d never trust a robot to drive Code 3 through eastern Arkansas.

Share this one if you know country EMS and city EMS are two completely different worlds.

Follow East Arkansas Paramedic for more rural EMS truths that make consultants nervous.

-- East Arkansas Paramedic

05/20/2026

There is a side of EMS most people never see.

They see the ambulance roll by. They see the lights bounce off the houses. They hear the siren for a few seconds, then the night gets quiet again.

But inside that rig, someone’s whole world may be coming apart. A father who can’t catch his breath. A mother clutching her chest. A child burning up with fever. A teenager wrapped around a steering wheel. A husband holding his wife’s hand, looking at the people in uniform like they might have the answer to the worst question he has ever had to ask.

And then there are the ones in the back of that rig.

The EMT. The paramedic. The firefighter who crossed over into medical because helping people once the fire was out still wasn’t enough.

They climb into that small space with a stranger and become the calm in the middle of everything breaking loose. They read the monitor. They listen to lung sounds. They start the IV. They give the medication. They manage the airway. They watch the clock. They talk to each other. They talk to the patient. They talk to the family. They make decisions that matter while the road is moving underneath them and someone’s life is sitting right there in their hands.

That's not just a ride to the hospital. That's responsibility.

And for a lot of them, it doesn’t even come with the kind of paycheck people would expect for that kind of weight. For some, it comes with no paycheck at all. Just a pager on the nightstand. A radio in the kitchen. A family that knows dinner might get cold and bedtime might happen without them.

So why do they do it? That’s the part that’s hard to explain.

Maybe somewhere along the way, they were the one who needed saving. Maybe they watched someone else step up, and it changed them. Maybe they found purpose in a place where most people only see pain.

Maybe they learned that redemption does not always come in church pews or clean endings. Sometimes it comes in the back of a rescue unit at 2 in the morning, when nobody knows your name, nobody sees what you did, and you still give everything you have because someone needed you.

EMS is not soft work. It will test your mind. It will test your heart. It will test your patience, your faith, your sleep, your family, and sometimes your ability to keep walking back through the door. But they do. They keep showing up.

For the chest pain call. For the rollover. For the lift assist. For the overdose. For the stroke. For the cardiac arrest. For the person who’s scared, hurting, embarrassed, angry, confused, or alone.

They show up because deep down, they know som**hing most people never have to think about. When life turns cruel without warning, somebody has to be willing to meet it head-on.

This EMS Week, we honor the people who do exactly that. The paid crews. The volunteers. The EMTs. The paramedics. The firefighters who carry both sets of gear and both kinds of burden.

You are more than transportation. You are more than a uniform. You are more than the few minutes people see from the outside.

You are the calm voice in the worst moment. You are the hands that start hope moving again. You are the reason someone gets another chance.

And that matters more than most people will ever know!

-PJ Cummings

05/20/2026

https://youtu.be/SMMCwqdof7E?si=Nvrcwrj0YaOeXnrM

What happens when you call 911… and no one comes?Every day across New York State, thousands of people rely on EMS without ever realizing how fragile the syst...

05/19/2026

A RESOLUTION DESIGNATING THE WEEK OF MAY 17 THROUGH MAY 23, 2026 AS EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES WEEK IN THE CITY OF OGDENSBURG

WHEREAS, emergency medical services (EMS) is a vital public service that plays a critical role in protecting the health, safety, and well-being of the community; and

WHEREAS, EMS providers are ready to deliver lifesaving care 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and

WHEREAS, access to quality emergency care significantly improves survival and recovery outcomes for individuals experiencing sudden illness or injury; and

WHEREAS, the emergency medical services system provides essential out-of-hospital care, including preventative services, follow-up care, and access to telemedicine; and WHEREAS, the EMS system is comprised of a coordinated network of professionals and volunteers, including emergency medical technicians, paramedics, emergency medical dispatchers, firefighters, police officers, nurses, physicians, educators, administrators, and trained members of the public; and

WHEREAS, the members of these organizations, whether career or volunteer, dedicate thousands of hours to specialized training and continuing education to maintain and enhance their lifesaving skills; and

WHEREAS, the City of Ogdensburg recognizes and appreciates the dedicated service of the Ogdensburg Fire Department, Ogdensburg Police Department, and the Ogdensburg Volunteer Rescue Squad; and

WHEREAS, the City further acknowledges the importance of regional cooperation and mutual aid provided by neighboring communities, including but not limited to Heuvelton, Morristown, Lisbon, and Oswegatchie; and

WHEREAS, that this year marks the 52nd anniversary of EMS Week, with the theme: “EMS Week: Improving Outcomes, Together” and

WHEREAS, it is appropriate to recognize the value, dedication, and accomplishments of all emergency medical services providers who serve the City of Ogdensburg and surrounding communities.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council of the City of Ogdensburg hereby designates the week of May 17 through May 23, 2026 as Emergency Medical Services Week in the City of Ogdensburg; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the City Council encourages all residents to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities in honor of the EMS profession and the essential services it provides.

05/18/2026

2026 Boating Course schedule

Complete your NYS certified boating safety course with USCG Auxiliary instructors.

May 23 Cranberry Lake Fire Dept. 8 am - 5 pm (all day class with lunch) 7115 State Route 3 Cranberry Lake, NY 12927

June 20 Lisbon Beach Campground 8am - 5pm (all day class with lunch) 9975 State Highway 37 Ogdensburg, NY 13669

July 15 & 16 Ogdensburg Police Department 8 am - Noon (each day) 800 Park Street Ogdensburg, NY 13669

Aug. 19 & 20 Black Lake Fish and Game Club 5 pm - 9 pm (both nights) 1 Gilmour Road Ogdensburg, NY 13669

Sept. 15 & 17 Ogdensburg Vol. Rescue Squad 5 pm - 9 pm (each night) 1223 Pickering Street Ogdensburg, NY 13669

To register or more information call 315-605-8041 or contact [email protected]

05/17/2026

https://emsweek.org/about-ems-week/

About EMS Week™The History of EMS Week™In 1974, President Gerald Ford authorized EMS Week™ to celebrate EMS professionals and the important work they do in our nation's communities. National Emergency Medical Services Week brings together local communities and medical personnel to honor the de...

05/17/2026

Recognizing those who respond in your time of need.