Being an EMT and firefighter with San Juan County Fire and San Juan EMS has been my most demanding job. It has been demanding physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Fire and EMS need to become a single emergency service, all-hazard organization. A single organization will help orchestrate our response for fire, medical, marine, and search and rescue calls. This includes organized responses to our neighbors on other islands.

Our community has voted for each commissioner on our Fire and EMS Boards. They have requested information and voted to support the merging of Fire and EMS into a single all-hazard emergency services agency. The reasons are simple, a single organizational plan, a single budget, a single response plan, and a single group of career, part-time, and volunteer staff. With a single agency comes a single operational strategy.

Emergency services are governed by regulations and laws that guide their management. These rules are found at the federal, state, and county levels. They are diligently reviewed, often edited, evidence-based, and historically proven. Emergency services laws and regulations cover staff positions and assignments, budget and finance, operations and equipment, safety and health, and every detail of how we operate and survive in the most difficult of situations. Read the rules to better understand how emergency services are organized and regulated for the citizens’ benefit. There are no loose ends.

Both our firefighters at San Juan Fire and our medical staff at San Juan EMS deserve the greatest level of community support. Island residents receive excellent responses and outcomes from both organizations. Each member is whole-heartedly dedicated to protecting our health and property, hands down, no questions asked. Let’s not pick at the details and undermine the support on which they depend and deserve to carry out their around-the-clock response to protect your welfare.

I have often been told by friends and neighbors that they are very happy with the job that I do, and yet they hope they never have to call on me. In fact, they do.

Join me in voting to approve the SJC Fire-EMS Levy on Nov. 2.

John Salinas

Firefighter/EMT, San Juan Fire/San Juan EMS; President, San Juan Firefighters Association