These Sackets Harbor teenagers became frontline emergency responders during the pandemic
Dec 15, 2021 —
The US is currently facing a shortage of healthcare workers, including emergency services personnel, like EMTS. North Country communities have been feeling that strain, especially because many emergency services here are run entirely by volunteers.
When the pandemic hit, the ongoing struggle to find and keep recruits got worse. A lot of older volunteers stepped away, because of COVID-19 health concerns. But in Sackets Harbor, a town of 1400 on the edge of Lake Ontario, teenagers stepped in to fill the void.
Under 21, and running an ambulance
Like many surrounding communities, Sackets Harbor has a volunteer fire department. During the pandemic, the department’s EMS crew, or ambulance service, has been averaging about a call a day.
Grayden Brunet is 20 years old, and he's the EMS captain. He manages the budget and organizes the EMS Crew. He became captain during the pandemic.
"My whole time being an officer here has been COVID. It's definitely been a learning experience. A lot of issues have arisen because of the pandemic. Supply shortages and funding and providers catching the virus...it's kind of being one worse case scenario after another."
We’re sitting in the fire station lounge. It’s got a big brown leather sofa, pictures of past firefighting crews on the walls. Brunet says the EMS crew spends a lot of time here. They train here, wait for calls here, sometimes even sleep here.
Brunet included, the EMS crew is comprised of eight people, all under the age of 21.
When you're all that's left
The crew hasn’t always been this young.
When Brunet joined at age 16, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, he was the baby, he says. "When I was finally old enough to join, I came here to one of the meetings and I was like, 'they're all a solid 20 years older than me.'"
The next day, Brunet went to school at Sackets Harbor Central, and managed to rope a few friends into doing it with him. Their names are Niklas Brazie and Dalton Hardison, and they're also now 20 years old.
Hardison says he didn't really know what he was getting into, "I thought it was gonna be something where you just kind of check out what's going on."
But when he and Niklas Brazie went on their first calls, Brazie says they quickly realized the level of responsibility they'd taken on. "My first call as a as a certified EMT was a suicide. So that kind of woke me up. I think his [Dalton Hardison] was a cardiac arrest. It sure sure woke us up pretty quick."
It also got them hooked on helping people, says Hardison. "I mean, it's turned into a true passion. We're spending as much time as we can down here."
When the young, energetic trio joined a few years ago, some of the previous EMS crew were able to step back a bit. Then, the pandemic hit. Brunet says a lot of the older EMTs stopped responding to calls altogether.
"We came in one day and we realized we were the only ones coming in."
Those were hard days, says Brazie. None of them were certified to drive the ambulance, and the agency actually changed the rules so they could get certified at a younger age and with less experience.
The darkest days of the first pandemic year
Three teenage boys were shouldering an almost unfathomable burden. They were responding to heart attacks and car accidents and suicides. Transporting COVID-19 patients to the nearest city hospital.
In New York, like many states, 17 year olds can become certified EMTS. 16 year olds can ride along and assist. But usually they're not alone, the way Brunet, Brazie, and Hardison often were.
They say it was never an option for the three of them to stop running the town’s ambulance. Brunet says that they never even considered it.
"Honestly, it comes down to if we stopped volunteering our time here, this agency would no longer exist. The community would lose the ambulance and it would be detrimental. So we don't really have a choice."
But there were only three of them, and they were also all working paid positions as Firefighter-EMTS nearby, in Watertown and at Fort Drum. They’d finish 48 hour shifts and come here to run the volunteer ambulance.
It got to be too much, says Brunet. "In the middle of COVID, we were getting so overwhelmed with everything that we were doing that we had to call an ambulance to every call to help us out."
That meant calling for a back-up ambulance from the nearest city. Hadison says they hated doing it, because it meant taxing another ambulance system, and that the patient would have a longer response time.
An influx of [even younger] new recruits
Then, a sudden ray of hope. A whole new batch of high schoolers applied to join the crew, starting with Sophia DeVito. She was 16. She and both her parents had gotten COVID-19 in March of 2020. The experience stoked the interest she already had in healthcare. Becoming an EMT was a way she could directly help people now.
"It’s someone’s mother, it's someone's father, it's a grandmother, it's a parent, it's a child, like these are actual people's lives. And when they call 911. They're expecting someone to, you know, be able to help them and get them to the right place."
Devito convinced her friend, Reese Mono, to join at the same time. Within half a year, another three had joined: Gannon Brunet, Evan Sova, and Cooper Antonsen.
And just like that, the crew went from an exhausted three to a functional eight. Captain Grayden Brunet says the new members, "came just in time, and with so much good energy. And when we were so stressed and stretched thin."
A team of professionals
In the fire station’s garage, Reese Mono, Cooper Antonsen, and Sophia Devito are running a standard ambulance inspection. Sophia explains, "it's what's called an 800 on the ambulance and that's essentially taking a look to make sure that we're up to date with all the supplies that we need to run a call. So we're just going through anything that we use, and then restocking."
With practiced efficiency, they pull out the ambulance stretcher. Antonson hovers over it. "So I'm just checking to make sure that we have all of the adequate supplies...that our oxygen is filled, which it is."
These teenagers take what they’re doing, every minute of it unpaid, really seriously. They have to, says 17 year old Evan Sova.
"Because we have a really small community. So most of the time going to a call, there's a good chance you're gonna know who you're going to. It's more personal."
16 year old Gannon Brunet says they train and practice obsessively. Everyone’s worst fear is being unprepared and having a patient pay for it. "If they call 911, they're calling people to help and you are the help. It's just called you to a higher standard that you can't mess up."
'We're a family. You're never lonely.'
Watching the crew work in their neat, navy uniforms, it’s really easy to forget their ages. That is, until they start teasing each other and making goofy jokes.
Several of them said they need that lightness and laughter. It helps them deal with the hard stuff. They have a group chat, and support each other through hard calls and long nights. They've had some really crazy ones, like the night before the first day of school this fall, when they responded to two ambulance calls and one structural fire, and made it home at 5:30 am. School started at 7:30 am.
Sharing the responsibility, and the burden, of running the ambulance has made them really close, says 16 year old Gannon Brunet.
"It just creates a bond that's almost inseparable. You have a second family to come to, there's always people to talk to. You’re never lonely, because all of us are friends."
Friends running an ambulance service.
Their school, Sackets Harbor Central, allows the 17 year old members to leave class to go on calls. Because if they don’t, the ambulance might not run.
