ACME — Ventilation issues at Acme Township’s fire hall prompted an ambulance operator to move its personnel and ambulance to a neighboring township.
That’s just until the fire hall gets needed upgrades to fix the ventilation, said Amy Fairchild, Mobile Medical Response’s Northwest Division operations manager. The company — called MMR for short — contracts with Acme and Whitewater townships to station an ambulance 12 hours a day in the two townships.
But Acme Township trustees are unhappy with the service their township is getting, and at their recent meeting they agreed to start looking for alternatives.
“I would say the board is disappointed with MMR,” Acme Supervisor Doug White said. “At least that’s what I took out of it. More than anything, they’re disappointed, and we’ll see where it leads to from there.”
MMR relocated on Sept. 11 after investigating a complaint one of its employees filed on Aug. 13 with the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, documents show.
The complaint claimed employees spend their shift in a room that fills with exhaust whenever the fire department drives a truck in or out of the hall — Grand Traverse Metro Fire Department shares the township-owned building with MMR.
An environmental testing firm cleared the room for carbon monoxide from exhaust, but found elevated levels of carbon dioxide attributed to the breath of the people inside — 889 parts per million at worst, compared to 459 outside the building, according to a letter from Critical Environmental Remediation Industries.
Fairchild said that’s high enough to pose a threat to MMR personnel.
“So, right now, it’s a safety concern … that’s the only reason we’re not there, because there’s not adequate crew quarters for them to be in while waiting for a 911 call,” she said. “As soon as we can get that resolved, we’ll be right back.”
Grand Traverse Metro Fire Chief Paul Mackin said he’s aware of the facility issue and is working with White to evaluate solutions. So far they have two bids at $9,337 and $2,538 — not including electrical work — for two different options. It’ll be up to Acme trustees to decide which one to pursue.
For now, MMR crews are spending all day in Whitewater Township, and Acme trustees are calling foul over this and other complaints.
White spoke the day after a township trustees meeting where he raised issues with MMR’s response times, particularly to a crash resulting in three injured people in East Bay Township on Aug. 18. That crash coincided with an MMR crew opting to spend the entire day in Whitewater Township after facing unspecified issues the day before, according to White.
When East Bay first responders called for mutual aid, MMR’s crew was still en route when firefighter paramedics from Peninsula Township arrived, White said.
“So myself, I don’t think too much of that,” White told trustees.
While MMR administrators initially denied their ambulance wasn’t in Acme Township, pointing to a vehicle locator signal, that turned out to be the result of a malfunction, White said. He offered to show them time-stamped camera footage to show the vehicle wasn’t there.
Fairchild said MMR addressed the Aug. 18 response internally, and disciplined the crew for not following protocol and procedure. Company tech personnel fixed the vehicle locator after discovering it hadn’t properly reset following a battery change.
She called the response a one-time incident, but last Tuesday, Acme trustees hinted otherwise.
Trustee Dale Stevens said it’s not the first time Acme officials had concerns about MMR’s response times, and trustee Paul Scott said he believed the EMS provider was in breach of its contract with Acme. Scott added that the complaint to MIOSHA looked inaccurate to begin with.
Fairchild said Wednesday the complaint seemed valid, given the carbon dioxide findings.
Acme trustees agreed they want White to look for alternative ambulance services, and to write a report of the various issues they see with MMR’s service to the township.
White on Wednesday said he’ll look for another provider, adding he’ll have to see what those might be. While some township trustees said they favored switching to a fire-based EMS service, that would require Grand Traverse Metro Fire Department making a change that its other two member townships — Garfield and East Bay — would have to approve.
“So I don’t think that’s a route that I would be taking,” he said.
Previous requests to East Bay Township to extend its ambulance service to Acme met resistance, with East Bay trustees rejecting contract negotiations in August 2021.
White said he would consider approaching East Bay again, although the results of his last request left him wondering how another would go over. He hoped to have something to discuss with trustees at their Nov. 12 meeting.
Fairchild said she was unaware of any concerns Acme Township officials have with MMR response times beyond the Aug. 18 incident, adding the provider meets monthly with them to give reports on those times.
And while White told trustees that, instead of 7 a.m., MMR crews had been showing up at 8-8:30 a.m. prior to moving out of the station, Fairchild said there’s no start time listed in MMR’s contract with Acme.
Fairchild said she’s confident Acme and MMR can continue working together, and that she would reach out to “see where the breakdown is.”
“I’ve been told they’re very frustrated that we’re not there right now, but they don’t have another solution or another place for us to have a crew to stay,” she said. “So we’re three miles down the road at a base that has adequate ventilation and space for them.
“As soon as the space is fixed, we’ll go back to the original agreement.”