- These rural areas are totally dependent
on volunteers.
- As director of Durand's ambulance service,
Peter Pillman has witnessed a steep decline in volunteers
for emergency medical positions.
- We have seen
that the number of people
that we have responding to calls
become less
and the burden on our staff
that we do have responding to calls
increasing greatly.
- The same issues that challenge
Durand's downtown
are factors in the volunteer shortage.
Many residents now commute out of town for work,
while others are holding down multiple jobs.
- So, we used to have janitors
or others that could leave work
to go on an ambulance call
and had flexible hours,
and that's no longer the case.
- Even after offering hourly wages
for what had always been volunteer positions,
as well as helping
to pay for EMT training, the ambulance service
has had a hard time getting fully staffed.
- So that's number six.
- But Peter believes the reasons
fewer people make the commitment to get trained
and to give of their time
is not only due to economic factors
but cultural ones as well.
- So what society is changing--
we used to have a lot more where--
say, a small farm, and I'm
using a barn-raising analogy.
We have a lot of Amish in this area,
and you'll still see it with some of them.
When they need to put up a barn,
they invite over all their neighbors
and they all pitch in.
[melancholy music]
- For Peter, the Amish remain much closer
to the type of community
that rural Wisconsin once was.
- It's built on that agrarian foundation
of farmers,
neighbors helping each other out,
and that's something
that I think even us in these rural communities
have lost that and have lost
understanding that.
As that is lost in the community,
as that is lost from the fabric
of our society,
we see that there are less people
being willing to sacrificially serve.