Mat-Su emergency responders vent frustrations

PALMER — Emergency responders forced to work too few or too many hours descended on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly last week, offering heartfelt and emotional testimony about their fears and concerns.

Though they are classified as paid on-call employees rather than permanent employees, many ambulance medics and firefighters regularly worked essentially full-time hours for years until the state stepped in.

A ruling from the state administration that oversees the Public Employee Retirement System informed the borough that employees who work more than 30 hours have to be offered retirement benefits. The borough, in response, capped the hours of most responders, saying it couldn’t afford to pay benefits to all the responders who would qualify.

In the meantime, the borough says it is filling schedule gaps caused by the cap with overtime hours offered to the few full-time employees it has and hopes to add 14 more in next year’s budget, set to be approved this summer.

But responders at Tuesday’s meeting said that relief won’t come soon enough.

Longtime medic Andrea Ritchie said she had tens of thousands of hours of training and experience. Since the crisis hit, she’s been pushed to the brink. She was asked to work long hours covering unfamiliar areas on a schedule that no longer fit with her day job and the rest of her responsibilities.

“This past Saturday I worked my full-time job. I went straight to the station. It was a station that I didn’t even know the door code to get in,” she said.

By the end of her shift she was so tired she didn’t feel safe driving home and got a ride from someone else.

“I slept off and on for most of the next day. The only thing I missed that day was my daughter’s birthday,” Ritchie said.

So, she’s quitting the service.

“I won’t be the last one,” she predicted.

Sandy Hoeft said the prospect of losing Ritchie from the service moved her to speak. She showed up having had three hours of sleep after a very long shift. The sleep deprivation is hard on her heart.

“If I pass out there’s people in the audience who can help out,” she said.

Responders in the Mat-Su are exploited, Hoeft said. They are put in a class of employees that aren’t allowed benefits and not treated as regular employees.

“All I can come up with is that we love our jobs and because we love our jobs we can be taken advantage of,” she said.

In her time, she has done work that has torn at her heart. A volleyball coach in her spare time, she has been called twice to help former players who had overdosed on heroin. She’d also been called to help an infant beaten to death by his father.

“These are things that we choose to do, but let me tell you, these are things that stick in your mind and eat at your soul,” she said. “What makes you think it’s OK to ask us to go on these kinds of calls and give to our communities, continue to give give give and we don’t get anything in return?”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.