HOUGHTON — Bay Ambulance has come close to becoming fully staffed with five local residents of the Baraga and L’Anse completing their paramedic course through the Upper Peninsula Health System’s School of EMT on October 19 to qualify for a state written test. Brandt Tembreull, Samantha Peltola, Ed Roth, Lisa Broemer and Mary Mayo took on the medical course that was scheduled and lined up to accommodate the inability to attend a traditional Monday through Friday class schedule nor move to Escanaba or Sault Ste. Marie to attend colleges.

The class oversaw 1,141 hours of training over two eight hour Saturdays per month for 16 months. The students applied real life experience during this time with 456 hours of clinical practice conducted in local hospitals and 30 calls as paramedic team members and 20 calls for each acting as a team leader.

Recently the students received certifications in Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support and Prehospital Trauma Life Support. Now all the students need to become fully certified is the test which will challenge the students’ knowledge and critical thinking. After passing the test the students will receive a National Registry Certification and a three-year Michigan Paramedic License.

These soon-to-be paramedics will be bringing long awaited relief to the understaffed Bay Ambulance, which has been running on only three full time employees with a handful of part timers. The paramedics of Bay Ambulance had a very limited social life due to needing to stay within a seven to ten mile radius from the ambulance office in order to respond to emergencies.

“It’s really caused some issues with burnout again and again,” Director of Bay Ambulance Gary Wadaga said. “It’s not a good quality family life because you don’t get to spend time with your spouse or friends or whatever it happens to be.”

Wadaga said however that the addition of the five paramedics has been a recent boost of morale. Paramedic Nathan Stockton said that the training he has been conducting with the students was a bit of a nostalgic experience. He said that it has made him recall how scary it as a new paramedic and the uncertainty at times of performing tasks correctly, but he feels confident that the students will perform well in the field.

One of the students and local firefighter, Tembreull, said that the past few recent months of courses were difficult but is looking forward to completing the test.

“It’s a lot more demanding that I think most people make it out to be, and it’s difficult, but it’s rewarding in the same factor,” he said. To me, it feels like a pretty big accomplishment. It’s (Bay Ambulance) one of the most used factors of our community, and that’s one of the highest factors of actually being able to help people because you can work fire and just be with fire, but there’s only so many car accidents, so many fires, and there’s a lot more medical calls.”

Another student, Peltola, has been working with Bay Ambulance for about three years but is now ready to conduct the full responsibilities as a paramedic to serve her community.

“I’ve lived in L’Anse pretty much my whole life, so I’m really happy to be able to serve people,” she said. “And it’s not just that I know them and see their faces, but it’s really great to be able to help people and see how you can help them, and pick somebody up and then see them at the store the next day. Being able to help a small community where it’s hard to get to people just means a lot more when you know that you’re helping out and you can see the effects of that.”