This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Croton must act quickly in order to preserve the health and safety of their residents

The village of Croton-on-Hudson needs to address a serious problem fast...

The health and safety of Croton-on-Hudson residents should be important to everyone, including non-Croton residents if they have insight into a problem.  I’ve been a volunteer firefighter in Ossining a bit over a year and, as such, I’m provided with a pager that allows me to respond to calls in Ossining Town and Village.  At times, however, I leave my page “open”, something that allows me to hear calls from all over Westchester County.

Let me cut to the chase: I am extremely troubled about the safety of Croton-on-Hudson residents in regard to Croton EMS responses.  Too many times I hear on my pager about someone having a stroke, a head injury, or falling from a ladder. Too many times Croton EMS is "toned" to their pagers (alerted) 3 times, sometimes in the span of 10 minutes and do not respond or respond 10 minutes late.  10 minutes can make the difference of someone being able to speak again if they’ve survived a head injury. 10 minutes could mean life or death if the call is for a heart attack or stroke. 

The safety and well being of all Westchester residents concerns me, and this is the only reason I wish to address this issue. Croton-on-Hudson residents feel they have a safety blanket with Croton EMS, but this is not always the case. They believe an ambulance will show up within minutes after making a call, but it doesn’t happen. Sadly, a 10 minute wait time could be way too long for medical car, and transport to a hospital.

Find out what's happening in Ossining-Croton-On-Hudsonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Many times Ossining responds to Croton EMS calls and while Croton residents get the service they need, it comes at the price of Ossining taxpayers.  OVAC  (Ossining Volunteer Ambulance Corp.) may receive money from the insurance company of the patient in Croton, but for that time period Ossining loses an ambulance that is supposed to be for its own paying residents.  In 2010 Ossining responded to 74 calls from Croton.  For comparison the Town Outside of Ossining (a paying participant in the ambulance district) had 105 calls that were responded to by OVAC.   Also, in January and February of 2011, 29 of the 50 calls in Croton needed mutual aide (an outside EMS) to respond.  These facts and statistics should be a wakeup call for the residents of Croton.  The Croton Village Board is well aware of this situation, but more pressure is needed by the residents to affect some sort of solution.  Republicans and Democrats can go back and forth about the role of government in our lives, but one thing is for certain -- government does exist for the health and safety of its residents.

For the health and well being of all Croton-on-Hudson residents, I respectfully ask Croton’s elected officials to address this situation as soon as possible. Lives depend on you.

Find out what's happening in Ossining-Croton-On-Hudsonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?