Supports 24/7 firefighters

We understand that the Whitefish Fire Department currently is not a 24-hour department, but its members are on call at night and respond from their individual homes to the station. They then determine what equipment and apparatus are appropriate for the current emergency.

That extra response time may translate into a critical delay for someone who is waiting for EMT help for their injured child or spouse, or for the fire truck to extinguish their burning house.

We at Grouse Mountain Lodge realize how important time, training and professionalism are in times of emergency. In the last two years, we have had two guests suffer cardiac arrests while visiting our lodge. Fortunately, our owners require that we have numerous trained personnel on staff and provide modern equipment like our defibrillator, so Grouse employees were able to use our training and equipment to help revive these guests, until ambulance personnel arrived.

Believe us when we say five minutes can seem like a lifetime of waiting when you're performing CPR or connecting and operating a defibrillator. Could you imagine waiting 10 to 15 additional minutes for those responders?

The staff of the Whitefish Fire Department provided valuable CPR and defibrillator training to about 30 lodge employees. We are truly grateful to them for taking the time to train us to help save our guests.

We feel strongly that in some manner, the city of Whitefish needs to find a way to get the fire department to a 24-hour shift schedule.

Rod Wilkerson, Karen Baker and Paul Alsippi

Grouse Mountain Lodge executive committee