History of Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service

The Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service Inc., or CLCAS, was founded in 1972 at an organizational meeting on Jan. 6 at the Damariscotta Town Office on Church Street. The service was organized after Fred French announced he was closing his private ambulance service.

The CLCAS has evolved from a largely transportation service where patients were loaded and moved as quickly as possible to the hospital (“bag and drag”), to an emergency room on wheels that uses the most advanced technologies available to them.

Before Fred French started his ambulance service (about 1968), two Damariscotta funeral homes provided transportation services to the hospital free of charge in the back of their hearses.

“In 1963 they took my father [Judge Ralph Gallagher] to Maine Medical in the back of Cliff Grindal’s hearse,” John Gallagher, an ambulance attendant of 41 years, said. “As a kid, when you see a hearse pull into your driveway it is not a good thing. That is why today we take the ambulance to all the fairs, so kids will not be traumatized.”

“He [Fred French] started his own ambulance service when the funeral services (including Strong Funeral Home owned by Myron Cummings and Grindal Funeral Home owned by Cliff Grindal) gave up their service, which they ran for free in their hearses. The state was setting requirements that they could not meet,” Samuel Roberts, the first president of CLCAS, said.

“Fred French, who worked at the hospital as a maintenance man, took it over as a private business. The two funeral homes purchased the Grey Ghost and donated it to him [French]. It had been the Bath City ambulance. Fred French could not make a go of it financially and announced as of Jan. 1, 1971 that he was going out of business,” Roberts said.

According to a Jan. 6, 1972 editorial in The Lincoln County News, “Fred French, who has provided service to the area has stated that he wishes to remove himself from this business like too many others have done recently. The cost of providing ambulance service has risen greatly in the past year, and to provide service on a strictly business basis is no longer possible.

“Ambulance service has changed rapidly due to state law, and rightly so, from no longer just providing transportation, to a service which must be prepared to give first aid to those who require it. To qualify to operate an ambulance no longer requires just a driver’s license. Before a license from the state is issued to an individual, he or she must have completed an advanced course in first aid, and prove himself capable of responding to whatever emergency he faces.”

The newly formed CLCAS, headed up by Samuel Roberts, covered six towns, and for the first time offered 24-hour coverage, seven days a week. Unlike the current service with attendants on duty 24/7 at the station, in the early years of the CLCAS, attendants were on an on-call basis with volunteers ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

At the initial organizational meeting, one person from each of six towns agreed to be on the board of directors for the CLCAS, including Samuel Roberts, of Damariscotta; Charles Cotton, of Bremen; Douglas Baldwin, of Bristol; Howard Plummer, of South Bristol; Robert Baker, of Newcastle; and James Hall, of Nobleboro. The first slate of officers were president Samuel Roberts, vice president Charles Cotton, secretary James Hall, and treasurer Douglas Baldwin.

Fred French agreed to continue his service for one month, while the newly formed corporation got organized. French donated his ambulance, a 1962 Plymouth, nicknamed the “Grey Ghost,” to the service.

An article in the Jan. 20, 1972 LCN stated, “Progress is being made setting up the new ambulance service. The present ambulance [Grey Ghost] is now housed in the Municipal Building in Damariscotta and has received repairs, with further work to be done as soon as the final corporation papers are drawn up. Several people have come forward offering to receive training and work on the service, but more are needed.”

A LCN article on Jan. 27, 1972 stated, “In a joint statement, Fred French, operator of the Fred French Ambulance Service and Samuel Roberts, president of the Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service, Inc. announce that as of Feb. 1 ambulance service to the towns of Bremen, Bristol, Damariscotta, Newcastle, Nobleboro and South Bristol will be provided by the Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service, Inc., and the Fred French Service will be terminated.”

“The doctors at Miles, especially Frank Avantaggio, got a hold of me to see if I could set one [ambulance service] up,” Roberts said. “They would provide the training and everything. I had volunteered on the ambulance for the funeral homes and had worked with Fred French. That is why they asked me to start the new ambulance service. During that time the hospital took care of all the linens at no charge and they provided all the supplies.”

“Frank Avantaggio cornered Sam and said he needed him to start an ambulance. Sam started the whole thing. After it was started, I did the bookkeeping (volunteer),” Sam’s wife, Abbie Roberts said. “He held meetings at the dining room table on Bristol Road and I served refreshments.”

Roberts made arrangements with local attorney, Mike Westcott, to set up the corporation, which he did pro bono according to Roberts. “We [Sam and Abbie Roberts] organized it all within a month,” Sam Roberts said. “We had to have a board set up. At the meeting, I made sure there were people from all the towns there. I pointed around the room and said, ‘you, you, you, you and you are on the board. I am the president.’ They all came forward and volunteered. None objected to me being president.

“I told them I would set it up and if I wanted them to do something I would ask, and if I asked them to do something they were to do it and not ask me how to do it. We only had a month to set the ambulance service up.

“We didn’t have time to discuss every little thing. I told them if they didn’t like the wording, they could vote to change it later. We did not have the time to waste talking about it. Freddie never gave us much forewarning,” he said.

The next step was to procure the necessary state permits.

“We had to fight through their bureaucratic mess,” Roberts said. “We had to jump through more hoops than you really needed to.

“We started out with the same three attendants Freddie had: Arthur Trank, myself, and I cannot remember the other, and we added two RN’s, Doris Pierce and Gloria Caswell,” Roberts said.

It was voted at the organizational meeting to request the towns to place articles in their warrants to appropriate funds for the upkeep and improvement of the service and to solicit donations, and apply for all possible federal and state monies in order to update equipment.

The directors voted to receive no compensation for their duties, but voted to pay drivers and attendants, and to charge $15 per call in the six-town area.

“Even though all the attendants were to be paid, many refused pay,” to help get the ambulance service up and running, Roberts said.

“At the time we were a volunteer service,” Gallagher said. “We got $2 per call, and that covered your clothing that was ripped or bloodied. Shifts were 24-hours on weekdays and 48-hours on the weekend,” he said.

State law required that at least one licensed attendant be with the vehicle, and the staff at Miles Memorial Hospital offered training sessions to fulfill the requirement. Among the first attendants were Doris Pierce, Linda Schick, Donna and Ray Stevens, Doug Baldwin, Jeannette Chasse, Sam and Abbie Roberts, and Lincoln Academy students Chris Roberts, Gary Stephenson, Linda Stephenson and Teri Mullins.

An early CLCAS record book listed the following as attendants: Lorraine Bryant, Roy Stevens, Paul Blomquist, Jeanette Chasse, George Farris, David Gay, John Gallagher, Fred Hutchins, Don Means, Jerri Pendleton, Ron Pendleton, Doris Pierce, Mark Potter, David Reed, Sam Roberts, Chris Roberts, Linda Schick, Rick Tarr, David Waltz and Cindy Yeaton.

According to John Gallagher, Winslow Billings and Dana Hatch were also early attendants.

According to a 1973 Newcastle Town Report, the CLCAS went on 234 calls for “emergency care and transportation” in their first year in business. The ambulance service opened with three licensed attendants, but soon added two nurses to increase their available attendants to five.

By the end of the first year, the complete medical staff at Miles Memorial Hospital had set up training and the service had grown to 17 licensed attendants, and plans were underway for another training session.

“It did not take us very long to realize we could not operate in the ambulance Freddie gave us. It was an overgrown station wagon,” Roberts said.

In May of 1972, the service had purchased a 1967 hi-rise Cadillac ambulance. The service had 24-hour answering service and later had a two-way radio contract through the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Wiscasset.

Roy Stevens holds the record for the fastest trip to Portland, at 36 minutes in the “old Cadillac,” John Gallagher said.

The infamous Cadillac ambulance that made it to Portland in 36 minutes with Ray Stevens driving is pictured at the Damariscotta Municipal building on Oct. 26, 1972. Pictured from left are firemen George Plante, Walt Gallant, and Harry Kierstead, ambulance attendant Samuel Roberts, and policemen George Hutchings and Bob Turner.
 

When the engine in the high rise ambulance ‘blew,’ on an unrelated trip, the man who sold it to CLCAS, loaned them a brand new Cadillac ambulance at his expense while it was being repaired. Roberts flew to Boston and drove the impressive loaner back to Damariscotta.

“When we first started, we had no communications,” Roberts said. “Mrs. Hubbard, of the answering service, took the calls and relayed them by telephone to me or the family. We always had to have somebody at the house on weekends or nights. She called the business [LCN] during the day.

“I remember at night, it was always, ‘sorry to bother you but …,’ then there was a long pause until you answered, ‘yes.’ Mrs. Hubbard always waited to make sure you were awake before she told you what was wrong,” he said.

“Mrs. Hubbard was a blessing,” Abbie Roberts added.

“We were tied to our house or business so she could get a hold of us. When you needed a second ambulance, she was always able to dig someone up. She was an amazing woman. She was able to get out of bed, get into her wheelchair and get to the dispatch phone in a minute,” John Gallagher said.

CLCAS went from phone calls to a pager system. The crew chief received a page and had to call Mrs. Hubbard to find out where they needed to go.

The pagers “were not very reliable. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t,” Gallagher said.

By the late 1970s CLCAS was using two-way radios, which were the size of a small “suitcase,” Gallagher said. According to Roberts, the first radio was provided by Flye Bait Service and was modified by George Cole, of Newcastle.

Gallagher said Flye had an antenna on Cole’s tower on the top of Academy Hill for Flye’s business and CLCAS hooked up to that tower, too.

After purchasing the Cadillac, the Grey Ghost was stored in Roberts’ garage on Bristol Road until the service moved to the Taniscot Fire House building in Newcastle on Nov. 28, 1974. They added a second bay on the back of the Taniscot building in the 1980s.

Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service moved to the former Taniscot Fire Station in Newcastle on Oct. 26, 1972. Pictured are an ’81 Cadillac and an ’82 Dodge high rise.
 

“We added a day room, for the people that were on-call during the day, so they could stay at the station,” Gallagher said. The addition was dedicated to EMT Win Billings, who helped maintain the ambulances and repaired the building, with its doors having just a quarter-inch clearance.

In 1974, according to the Newcastle Town Report, the service responded to 273 calls. There were 26 licensed attendants, and three attendants were on-call at all times, 24-hours a day. Two-way radios were added to both ambulances, providing direct communication with Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta, St. Andrews Hospital in Boothbay Harbor and Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Out of establishing the new ambulance service came the start of the present day “first responders,” who were also trained by Miles.

According to Sam Roberts, the ambulance service was called first, then a trained first responder in the neighborhood was called. “When they had local constables (officers), they would notify the officers in their area and quite often they would show up and give us help,” Roberts said.

“A lot that were on with CLC are now serving on first responder groups. First responders are the backbone of EMS. They get there and start lifesaving CPR and stabilize” the patient, Gallagher said.

Among those who started out with CLCAS and went on to become first responders in their home towns were Gerry and Ron Pendleton (Bristol), Harold Abbott and his sons (South Bristol) and Hank Nevens and his wife, Linda (Bremen).

During a state-run extrication course at Strong Chevrolet [in Damariscotta], state workers acted as victims. “We [CLCAS staff] were questioned; that we were not doing it the right way. The victim said, ‘they had better watch the way they [CLCAS] did it because I didn’t even know I had been moved,'” Roberts said.

On one inspection from the state to make sure the CLCAS had all the supplies they were required to carry in order to maintain their license, the state determined that they only had 11 sanitary napkins, when they were required to have 12.

“The one that was missing we had used for a compression on a head injury for a male. I will never forget Dr. Sam Belknap laughing at me. He said, ‘first of all, you don’t know which sex it belongs on, and you’ve got it on the wrong end,'” Roberts said.

When CLCAS first started, they were not allowed to administer any medications. “Even the RN’s couldn’t,” Roberts said. The ambulance attendants could not establish IV’s [intravenous lines] in the field, but they could continue an IV that was started in a hospital. “Which was almost impossible in the Grey Ghost,” Roberts said.

“We could administer oxygen. The object was to get them to the hospital as quick as you could. Broken bones were x-rayed before the doctor was called. I never had a case where a doctor wasn’t there if I said I needed a doctor. They usually met me at the door,” Roberts said.

Roberts said the hardest call he ever went on was an auto accident where, “we kept the patient alive until we hit Portland, and lost her. They did a preliminary autopsy while we were having coffee, and reported it was a useless case, a severe head injury. That was the only one time we lost a patient that was alive when we picked them up.”

On one call, “a passerby found a woman in a ditch [with hypothermia]. We could find no vital signs, but by the time we got her to the hospital, she was talking. Even though you could get no pulse, you had the feeling something was there,” Roberts said.

“Twice Abbie [Roberts] had to sit out in the cold, waiting for a medical examiner to show up; [there were] two people, one who had expired and another one suffering from extreme exposure to propane. We had to leave Abbie with the dead one in an ice shack on Great Salt Bay, while transporting the other one,” Sam Roberts said.

“Another time, she had to sit waiting for a medical examiner while we went on another call on Sheepscot Road, at which point she said, ‘please get more attendants.'”

Roberts’ most embarrassing call was a woman who fell in her bathtub and broke her hip. Roberts and another male attendant responded and laid a sheet over her to protect her privacy. They struggled getting a carrying cloth under her because the sheet kept floating up and getting in the way. The woman “threw the sheet off and said, ‘now you can see what you are doing,'” Roberts said.

“There were several years we did not have a Thanksgiving without an ambulance call,” Abbie Roberts said.

“In the late 1960s Roberts would literally cruise Main Street and pull someone in,” John Gallagher said of getting help for an ambulance run.

One time, Gallagher was fishing for stripers off the Damariscotta- Newcastle bridge when Roberts stopped on the bridge, rolled his window down, and told Gallagher they needed more help on the ambulance and he should sign up.

Gallagher took a 70-hour advanced EMT course in Bath at a cost of $55, and joined the ambulance service in October 1972. He is still active today as an intermediate (one step below a paramedic), 41 years later.

“Some of us just don’t know when to quit,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher’s wife, Mary, was on the service for 34 years and was still a member at the time of her death. A memorial fund was set up in her honor for an EMT class scholarship for one Lincoln Academy student every year. Nick Bryant was the first recipient of the scholarship.

Alvin Sproul and Bob Silvia also passed away while on the service.

“I was trying to run the LCN business; I was a start-up director of DB&T, I was very active in the press association and realized I no longer could be the basic driver,” he said.

“I agreed to be an attendant, if necessary. It was up to the others to run. I felt my plate was full. At that point we had sufficient attendants, had opened up and had representatives of attendants on the board, and were pretty well established. That was probably four years after we started it,” Roberts said.

Doug Baldwin was the second president of CLCAS. That role rotated between Baldwin, David Reed and John Gallagher for a number of years.

“We held every different position. There is still a core of people that have been there in that 20-year range, that still do those jobs to make it necessary to make it function properly,” Gallagher said.

“Our first paramedics were Harold Abbott and David Reed. The hospital recognized the need for more life support, so [they] offered scholarships so we could have people at the paramedic level.

The thing about the paramedic level, in order to keep skills and training up, you had to be full time, and work for more than one service,” Gallagher said.

In 1972, when Gallagher with five others, took his intermediate class, they had to have five years experience on an ambulance. “Now you can go to college and get it without any previous experience,” Gallagher said.

The CLCAS crew participates in an extrication course circa 1980s
 

In 2013, basic EMT three-month courses cost between $800-$1000; six-month-long intermediate classes cost up to $3000 and the year-long paramedic certification can cost $10,000 or more.

After Roberts left, “Bob Baker was one of the real catalysts for the whole operation. He has had over 40-years of dedicated time,” Gallagher said. “He ran the board until a few years ago.

“The new building (on Piper Mills Road) is dedicated to Bob Baker. He kept the business running. He and Peter Goth were responsible 15-years-ago for bringing the ambulance service to the point it is today. We are considered one of the premiere ambulance services in the state, both in equipment and training.”

Doug Baldwin was the last of the original board of directors to retire (in around 2000).

The new CLC Ambulance Service station on Piper Mills Road, Damariscotta. (Paula Roberts photo)

Today, the CLCAS is located in its new facility on Piper Mills Road in Damariscotta, which they moved into in 2000. Dispatching the ambulance has gone from home dispatch through Mrs. Hubbard and Pat Austin, to dispatch by Boothbay Harbor Communications Center, to the present day Northeast Security. Emergency 9-1-1 calls go to Lincoln County Communications Center in Wiscasset who relay them to Northeast Security.

Northeast Security is used because they “take care of all the bookings [transfer appointments] for us. They keep track of our bookings and remind us,” current service chief Warren Waltz said. Waltz has been with CLCAS since 1990.

The day before Labor Day, Gallagher said he was approached and asked if there were any plans drawn up for a new building, because, “I have someone who would like to donate money to build the building, but I have to have a set of plans by tomorrow night.” Gallagher, who used to teach drafting and industrial arts, got to work and drew up a quick set of plans for the building.

That original set of plans was later tweaked by Bob Silvia and Gallagher. The new building, built with funds from an anonymous donor, could house up to six ambulances, had four bedrooms for the evening crew, a kitchen and living room, two offices, a board meeting room and a training room.

Louis and Amelia French donated the land for the new ambulance building. CLCAS moved into their new home in 2000.

The ambulance has gone from all-volunteer, to stipend pay, to an all-paid staff that is on duty 24/7 at the station. They have two crews on at night, five people on during the day and six on weekends. There is now a fleet of five diesel ambulances, plus an SUV transport vehicle.

Another service CLCAS provides is house number signs. The green safety street signs are available for a $20 tax-deductible donation to the ambulance service.

Today there are 30 people on the CLCAS roster.

“The real core of the crew today are Warren Waltz, Ryan Gallagher, Mark Doe, Ellen McFarland, Terry Mitchell and Larry and Brent Hallowell,” Gallagher said. “A lot of our crew also work on Waldoboro and Wiscasset” ambulance services. Three crewmembers, R. Gallagher, Waltz and Doe have over 20 years of service and all three got their start through the student program at Lincoln Academy.

The minimum training needed to be an ambulance attendant is an EMT, but the CLC Ambulance has two paramedic level attendants on duty during the day and one on duty at night, with others available on-call as back-ups.

Ambulances are outfitted with the newest equipment, including a cardiac machine with 12 leads. Through it, “an EKG can be sent to the doctor in the ER, so they can read it and know exactly what they have before we arrive,” Waltz said.

The CLCAS is in its ninth year with the cardiac program at Maine Med. CLCAS has been recognized nine times by the MaineHealth Cardiac Advisory Program through Maine Med for their care of cardiac patients.

“It’s amazing; we can forward transcripts directly to the hospital now. We’re cutting edge for Maine,” Gallagher said.

While early ambulance attendants could only administer oxygen, today’s paramedics can administer a wide range of treatments, including IV’s, respiratory medications, bronchial dilators, steroids, epinephrine, pain medications, and diabetic medicine including intermuscular, to name a few.

With the ability to administer pain medications, paramedics are able to manage a patient’s pain before moving them to cut down on their distress.

New in 2013, ambulances are equipped with iPads using a system Waltz calls Tele-Meds. Doctors in the emergency room through the system can look at the patient in real time. The system, nicknamed “doc in a box” by staff at Miles Hospital [now LincolnHealth], “is basically a video camera. It gives the doctors an instantaneous” view of the patient, Waltz said.

Waltz estimates CLCAS will handle just under 2800 calls in 2013, up over 100 times from the service’s first couple of years. He estimates 40 percent or about 1100 are emergency calls, and 60 percent are basic transfers.

Waltz said the number of ambulance cases has dropped over the last few years, which he believes is due to the lack of health insurance.

Another big change in the department is the use of safety equipment for attendants, who wear rubber gloves and masks and eye protection on scene to prevent the spread of blood borne pathogens.

In the early days, patients were moved to the hospital as quickly as possible, while today, patients are given pain management and are stabilized before transport. “The returns used to be lights and sirens, but not now,” Waltz said.

Waltz gave an example of a tennis player at the CLC YMCA in Damariscotta, whose heart went into an irregular rhythm that was life threatening. Through the modern equipment on board, the ambulance crew were able to treat the patient on scene and rectify the life threatening event, and stabilize the patient before transport.

Since its inception, CLCAS has had 238 people volunteer on the service. “Some stayed a year of two, and some decided to make a career of it,” Gallagher said.

Some got their start as students at Lincoln Academy. “Now the state will not allow students. They need to be over 18 years of age to be on the ambulance,” Gallagher added.

One call that stands out in Gallagher’s mind was in the 1980s when a truck collided head-on with a car with two women and a baby in it. “Doug (Baldwin), David (Reed) and I were on call. The engine of the car was sitting in between the two front seat passengers, who had multiple and severe injuries,” Gallagher said. “One coded [slang for code blue for cardiac arrest] several times.

“We didn’t have (jaws of life) at the time. We couldn’t get at one of them because the car was up against a guardrail. The baby was fine. He was having a happy time in the back in his car seat. We got the passenger out and Doug and David took her to Miles and left me with the driver. The fire department showed up.

“Six firemen dragged the car off the ra