Day or night, we expect them to come to our rescue, but their pleas for help are going unheeded.
Waitaki Valley emergency service personnel have joined forces to plead with people in their rural communities to come forward and help staff the volunteer services, especially St John.
The recent influx of thousands of visitors into the valley - an influx the size of a small town - pushed St John volunteers to the limit and placed added pressure on the other services, they said.
St John has been desperate to find volunteers to staff its rural stations for some time.
Extensive publicity has so far attracted only a few new recruits.
Last week, St John North Otago territory manager Ken Barton, Kurow acting station manager Carol Harding, Constable Craig Bennett, of Kurow, and Kurow Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer John Sturgeon told Courier Country the situation was critical.
St John Twizel has been unable to guarantee its community a full 24-hour, seven-day-a week service since about last June.
Mr Barton said over the holiday period there had been some days when there had been no cover, including all day on Christmas Day.
On occasions, ambulances had to be called in from other areas, sometimes as far away as Timaru, causing delays of up to two hours. The Kurow ambulance attended two Twizel calls in December.
Mrs Harding said St John Kurow had been able to maintain its 24-hour service but only because volunteers had put in many hours and she was conscious they were overworked and she feared they could ''burn out''.
In 2013, callouts in St John's North Otago territory - which includes Mt Cook, Twizel, Kurow, Waimate, Oamaru, Palmerston and Ranfurly - had increased nearly 10% on the previous year, Mr Barton said.
Lack of volunteers means rural cover in jeopardy. Callout numbers went up two weeks either side of Christmas to about seven a day compared with the usual one or two a day, Mr Barton said.
St John stationed two personnel in Otematata specifically for the holidays, but had been unable to persuade visiting volunteers to offer their services despite advertising and an offer of free accommodation.
Many valley volunteers were employed in the service, hospitality and agricultural sectors, whose workloads swelled over summer.
Kurow, like other small towns, had a dwindling pool of people it could call on, with many residents having to travel out of town for work, he said.
Const Bennett said the police brought in extra staff to cater for the estimated 5000 people who poured into Waitaki Valley towns and lakeside camping grounds over Christmas-New Year.
As was the way in rural communities, each of the services ''would do anything to make it easier'' when another was short-crewed. He had at times found himself driving the ambulance, or giving other services' personnel a lift to an incident.
Nationally, moves have been made to formalise some of these relationships - in Kurow, police, fire and St John personnel had begun meeting monthly. Rural communities, such as Kurow, had a long tradition of ''taking care of each other''.
''We need a bit of that spirit back again,'' Mr Barton said.
Some employers were doing their bit to support staff, but Kurow Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer John Sturgeon said it could be difficult for those in work who had to negotiate with employers to find the time to commit to the role.
However, some employers were exceptionally generous.
At Hakataramea Motors, for example, two employees of the four were volunteers and were regularly called away from work to respond to emergencies, he said.
The Fire Brigade was making plans to publicly acknowledge this kind of commitment by employers, he said.
Mr Sturgeon, who is employed by Meridian Energy, said the company recently told its staff it was prepared to support those who wanted to volunteer for St John by offering training and allowing them to be on call during work time.
Constable Craig Bennett, of Kurow, said he would like to see every employer in small towns put something similar in their employment contracts.
Admittedly, it could be hard on some but it was a way they could ''give back'' to their community, he said.
- by Ruth Grundy
