Mr Steve Davis contacted Sierra Wave via Zoom to discuss its February 10 article, “Inyo County EMCC Works to Resolve Rural Ambulance Crisis, Olancha Cartago Fire Fails To Create Contract with Liberty Ambulance” https://sierrawave.net/inyo-county-emscc-struggles-to-resolve-rural-ambulance-crisis-olancha-cartago-fire-fails-to-create-contract-with-liberty-ambulance Mr. Davis is a consultant to Olancha Cartago Fire Department. He was raised in Olancha, became a paramedic, helped start the Olancha ambulance service in 1985, and Reti 20 years as a paramedic and operations manager at Liberty Ambulance.

“I didn’t want to get into a, basically an argument at the EMCC meeting,” said Steve Davis, “but I felt like even then that kind of where that was headed was probably not factually accurate.”

At the previous EMCC meeting, Inyo County expressed concern over strained EMS and Liberty Ambulance Service (Ridgecrest) operating at a severe economic deficit.

“We didn’t even have an ambulance service until 1985, and myself and some other concerned citizens and people, started that ambulance service. And it has run consistently all along up until … July.

“…the county basically throwing all this in the lap of Olancha and saying, ‘well, we should have done an agreement with Liberty Ambulance.’ … We have an area that we serve, we haven’t had an actual exclusive operating area or signed any contracts or anything with ICEMA or the county for over ten years because of the onerous requirements that San Bernardino through ICEMA put on the contracts that they wanted us to sign. So we haven’t had any obligation other than a moral and ethical obligation to provide ambulance service in that area for over a decade.

“That said, Liberty Ambulance [is] somewhat in the same boat.

“More due to the requirements, somewhat similar to some of the problems that we encountered with the contracts, they elected not to sign any further contracts. And in fact, their only … interest was, again, a moral and ethical obligation in the south end of the county. That’s Liberty.

“… And I spoke with [Mr. Brian] Baskin [EMS Director of Operations, RN EMPT-P] a few weeks ago. He said, … I’ve reached out to everybody. I’ve reached out to the county. I’ve reached out to multiple people in Olancha who are involved with the fire department, and the board. Nobody’s ever returned my call. He said the only person that’s ever responded to me or reached out to me at all was me.

“But the reality is, and this is my point, the county does have a responsibility here that Olancha does not necessarily have. We have no statutory nor contractual obligation to provide ambulance services to them, even within our own district. And what we do and we will [do] again, we’re working on staffing, there’s a lot of things in progress. But for [Inyo County Supervisor Jen] Roeser to say, well, you know, we gave them money. The money that they transferred was so long ago, the $25,000 they keep referring to, was transferred in October of 2023. I don’t even know if that was even necessarily earmarked for us, meaning Olancha, to have an agreement or put forth an agreement. …It was at the time, I believe, put forth to further EMS services, training, equipment, things like that. And all of a sudden, … it’s, well, you have this $25,000, you should enter into some kind of an agreement, mutual aid agreement, contract, whatever, with Liberty.

…

“Liberty’s in a position where they’re so frustrated that when I approached Mr. Baskin, his thing was, if you want us to continue, it’s $500 a call. And I said, well, Brian, if it’s $500 a call, what about the calls where you transport and you’re able to bill for those transports? The billing is so low, versus the cost of our responses and the risk we take of not being able to meet our response time … requirements in Kern County, that it’s too much risk versus zero reward for them. So they’re extremely frustrated.

“I have spoken to the [Olancha Cartago] chairman of the board [when] Neil Gordon was the chairman. Now Ryan Chavira is now the new chairman of the board. But we propose to pay them from Olancha $4,000 a month.

“What Brian told me was $500 a call when they average, not even necessarily in Olancha, but the southern end of the county, such as Pearsonville, auto accidents between Pearsonville and Coso, … coming all the way into Olancha a couple of times, all the way up to … halfway to Lone Pine on calls. He said their call volume has increased substantially over the last couple of years from 15 or 20 calls a year to 8 to 12 calls a month, dragging them … out of Kern County into into into Inyo. And I’m sure they’re already short-staffed just like everybody else in the world. … they’re a paid service, … they pay their people,

“What I guess I’m trying to differentiate between what it seems the position of the county is, which is they don’t have, they have no responsibility, that it’s on Olancha to figure out how to cover as an example, and this is, this is one of the big bones of contention from Little Lake to Pearsonville, which is a historically Liberty has, even though they haven’t had a contract, they have historically covered for decades.

To Be Continued… we’ve been updated by Steve Davis on major progress and sat down with Supervisor Jen Roser for Skippable News.