Chili, booyah, raffles back local paramedics

Oconto Falls Ambulance Service holds its first holiday open house in three years
By: 
Warren Bluhm
Editor-in-chief

The Oconto Falls Ambulance Service headquarters was full of visitors Dec. 3 enjoying chili and booyah, choosing which bucket raffles to enter and bringing their children for a visit with Santa Claus.

It’s the first time in three years that the annual fundraising event could be held in person, service director Patrick Ahlgrim said.

“We sold the booyah and chili with drive-up service during the pandemic, and we did an online auction, although we still sold raffle tickets,” Ahlgrim said. “It’s great to have everyone back.”

This was also the first fundraiser since the provider became Oconto County’s first critical-care paramedic service at the beginning of 2022, which has made the organization a lot busier, he said.

“We’ve tripled our call volume from a year ago,” Ahlgrim said.

This is the first year of a five-year contract for the newly upgraded ambulance service, which serves the towns of Oconto Falls, Morgan and Stiles, the city of Oconto Falls and the village of Lena. Each municipality has a vote on the board of directors and contributes annual fees to the operation.

Ahlgrim and his wife, Angie, pursued the upgrade in part because of the delays incurred when patients needed to be transferred under paramedic care to a hospital in Green Bay or Milwaukee. In those cases, patients were dependent on the out-of-county ambulance’s availability and the time it takes to arrive. Now the paramedics are based in Oconto Falls.

It has made a big difference having a full-time crew — a critical-care paramedic and a non-medic (EMR, EMT or AEMT) — available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Ahlgrim said. The personnel rotate living at the ambulance service, serving two, 24-hour shifts a week.

The response time has also been aided by the service’s newest ambulance, which has the latest, state-of-the-art equipment and can manage snowy roads better.

“We needed to add a four-wheel-drive vehicle to our fleet,” Ahlgrim said, adding that the new ambulance stays in the Oconto Falls area to handle emergency 911 calls, and the older ambulances are used for the transports to big-city hospitals.

Ahlgrim showed off the new epoxy concrete flooring that Josh Wirtz and NEW Concrete installed in mid-November, replacing aging carpet in the offices and corridors.

Building upgrades have also been done by James Klein Carpentry and Steve Spaulding, Mark Hillberg and Hillberg Electric and EZ Glide Garage Doors, he said.