Monhegan rescue service calls it quits

For 20 years, Monhegan Island residents had their own licensed rescue service, bringing emergency care to the sick and injured and even saving lives. Now the service itself has died, a victim of rising costs, training requirements and a lack of volunteers.

Last April the Monhegan Emergency Rescue Service “breathed its last,” as director Susan McDonough put it. Fortunately for islanders, LifeFlight of Maine, a hospital-sponsored helicopter service, now includes Monhegan on its roster of islands receiving 911 emergency services.

But things aren’t the same. LifeFlight or the Coast Guard can be called in acute situations, said Tom Judge, LifeFlight’s executive director. “They [islanders] certainly do not have the level of care they used to have.”

As for LifeFlight’s service to Monhegan, “There are very few emergencies, period. Of that few, very few are desperate,” said Judge, who lives in Port Clyde, where a ferry makes the 10-mile run to Monhegan. A nurse aboard the Sunbeam V, operated by Maine Seacoast Mission, serves medical needs on several Maine islands but Monhegan isn’t one of them.

Not yet, anyway. Seacoast Mission officials said they have been talking with Monhegan residents about what could replace the local rescue service. The mission is also concerned about supplying mental health support to island communities.

There may be no substitute for on-the-island first responders. In 2006, an elderly man fell down a steep incline on the island and suffered a head injury and lacerations. It took volunteers four hours, passing the victim along hand to hand, to get him to a boat for a trip to the hospital. He ended up with many staples and stitches, McDonough reported.

Things have been tough at MERS, too. In a Christmas appeal that year, McDonough wrote, “This summer was the worst summer yet for head injuries; luckily, everyone survived.” In seeking contributions at that time, she asked residents to imagine Monhegan without MERS.

Now that’s a reality. Dissolving MERS also meant the end of a popular summer residency program called Doc-on-a-Rock. Doctors got free housing if they agreed to be on call during their island stay. McDonough and her board tried to keep MERS funded and functioning, but it got to be too big a struggle. Finally, one of two remaining EMTs resigned, and one person could not be on call nonstop, year-round.

“We will do whatever we can,” said Judge, who serves on the St.George ambulance service when he is not at his Bangor office. Keeping an emergency medical service going “is a struggle everywhere,” he said. “If you’re up in the North Woods, it’s not dissimilar. There are very few medical resources. This all relies on a group of good-hearted local people who drop what they’re doing to help their neighbors. It will always rely on a handful of people.”

Matinicus Island relies on two EMTs, Judge said.

EMTs must meet state training requirements, and these days that could mean taking courses on the mainland. “Survival on Monhegan requires holding a full-time paying job or running a business,” McDonough wrote in a final letter to community members near and far.

She tried to bring a first-responder class to the island, but said the state was as understaffed as Monhegan and it didn’t happen. On top of that, cash donations to MERS had been falling for a couple of years, and despite benefit dances, a band concert and a sale of works by Monhegan artists, the service fell $15,000 short of its budget in 2006.

“Thank you all for your support over the last 19 years, especially during the past year when we made a valiant effort to save MERS,” wrote McDonough, who operates Monhegan Trucking.

Matt Schweier, who served on the MERS board, said he was sorry to see the agency close down but it seemed inevitable. Paramedic Luke Church left MERS after many years when he decided to move off Monhegan. Faryl Wiley, a licensed EMT who helped found MERS, retired from that work last year.

McDonough has said Wiley kept MERS “functioning and afloat,” and was a credit to the island community.

Schweier, a Cleveland native who moved to Monhegan six years ago, said he has faith that fishermen and other local residents are ready to help one another in an emergency to the best of their ability. Tensions exist in a community of 40 year-round residents, he acknowledged, but all differences are put aside in an emergency. “There is never any question that people will step up and lend you a hand,” said Schweier, a sternman who also runs an excavating service.

The Friends of the Monhegan Fire Department plan to take over the MERS headquarters on Black Head Road. Meanwhile, a telemedicine unit connected to Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport remains in the building.