First Responders Honored at Chamber Meeting

Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, an emergency call system was implemented that today is familiar to most every person in our country that is old enough to say daddy or mommy. We simply know this call system by three numbers – 911.

Joe Trussell helps to honor 911 responders, police and firefighters at Chamber meeting

The goal of this system was and still is for every single person, in every geographical area in our country to be able to dial 911 and be connected with someone that can dispatch emergency help to them. And today, that is pretty much reality. Even in the remote mountains of Colorado, or the remoteness of our own Cedar Springs or Roscoe, Schell City – even if there is no cell coverage, most phones have the ability to access satellites to get a 911 call through.

And last year – and this number is mind boggling, but last year, in our country, there were 240 million 911 calls made. 240 million. If I used my calculator correctly that means that there were over 27,000 911 calls for ever hour, of every day, of week, of every month, for the entire year.

So what happens when you dial 911? Well, I can’t speak to the process for every part of the country, but if you dial 911 here in Cedar County, the call goes directly to the Cedar County Sheriff’s Department in Stockton and those in the dispatch office will answer 911, what is your emergency? And by the way, how many of you have had to call 911?

But after hearing the nature of that emergency, they will then contact the particular agency that deals with that emergency, Fire department, EMS, Sheriff deputies or police – and sometimes even multiple agencies. And then those departments will send out a tone on their pagers or a message on their phones through textcaster technology or contact them through radio and they will be dispatched to the emergency.

Now that information perhaps seems unnecessary for a Chamber Luncheon where normally the focus is to give information on how to better our businesses, but the information I gave, leads us into what we are going to do today. It is our privilege to honor those who respond to the 911 calls in our county. Now some of those who respond are men, some women. Some are volunteers, some are employed part time, some are full time. Some respond to save lives, others respond to save property. But then all who respond, are there to bring comfort when there is loss.

So let’s begin by honoring our EMS, or our emergency medical service personnel. Now in the general category of EMS are two departments – you have our First Responders – who many times are first on the scene. They are trained to offer basic life saving measures, as well as stabilize the patient. Our county has 14 First Responders and these are strictly volunteers, who serve not for pay, not for recognition, rather they fly under the radar, but I am so thankful to have them in our county. Recognize First Responders.

The second group in our EMS department would be those who respond, and in EMS language with a truck – we generally call it an ambulance. Our county runs two simultaneous ambulance crews who work 24 hour shifts. The goal is to have one ambulance in Stockton and another in El Dorado Springs. We have 16 full time paramedics or EMT’s and 12 part timers.

These men and women, last year responded to listen – to 2,956 emergency calls – about 8 per day.

Now I have been honored to serve as the county Chaplain for the Fire Dept, Police Dept and Sheriff’s department, as well as serve as one of the Coroner’s in our county, so I frequently end up at many of these emergencies with EMS. And when they are there, it brings me comfort – because I know that they are doing or have done everything possible to treat the medical emergency and save lives.

But the elephant in the room is the common statement that I hear of why, why did it take so long for the ambulance to get here? Well, when you have nearly 15,000 people in the county but only 2 ambulances, there will be times when one or both ambulances will already be on a call. And so unfortunately the ambulance that is dispatched may have to come from the far reaches of our county or perhaps even from another county.

So my question, and perhaps your question is – why don’t we have more ambulances here? Why can’t we add a 3rd ambulance to the county? And that is a fair question that I think deserves an answer. And so I asked this question to an ambulance Board member and the response, as we all know comes back to the money issue. This blows my mind, but to have a 3rd functional ambulance, with the different crews and different equipment needed to function properly would take about a million dollars. If we are not in the medical field we might not understand that, but if you have had any type of medical treatment recently, you might at least partially understand the price tag here.

Now there is some hope for another ambulance to be added to our county. There is a tax called a USE tax, and I’m not an expert on this so don’t ask me any questions here, but from my understanding and it goes deeper than this, but the USE tax is what is collected on purchases from out of state sellers or online purchases that did not collect Missouri sales tax at the time of purchase. Again, probably an over simplification, but all of that to say that that tax currently goes to the state.

However, there is a clause that says that if the county will request that money from the state, then they have to give that money back to the state, but it has to come from a vote from the people. So the belief is that the money is already there that could fund a 3rd ambulance, but they have to get it on the ballot and they hope to have that done at an election in the near future. So stay tuned – hopefully one day we can have a 3rd ambulance and crew in our county.

Next I want to highlight the El Dorado Springs Fire Department. We honor Chief Bob Floyd, and our Assistant Chiefs Roger Floyd and Craig Carpenter. Trent Floyd and Austin Taylor – captains. Jonathan Schwalm and Kade Gerstner – Lts.

The 34 volunteer fire fighters in our department have responded to 143 calls so far in 2026. Last year – 149 calls – this year at this rate the Fire Department could have nearly 200 calls.

Now obviously, as a fire department, most of the calls are fires, some brush fires, some structure fires, some automobile fires, some tractor fires, some fires involving bales of hay. But they also respond to a variety of other calls such as gas leaks, smoke alarms, car crashes where they are tasked with the responsibility of carefully extricating people.

Would you please thank Chief Floyd and our El Dorado Springs Fire Department.

And then today we also honor the Cedar County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff James McCrary, who couldn’t be here today, but Chief Deputy Clay Jeffries and the 12 full time and 4 reserve deputies. They responded to – listen to this – 9,169 calls last year. 25 calls per day.

These are men and women that don’t get paid a lot – but they do this because they have been called to serve. And again, I have worked with many of them on different calls – and some of the calls were not pleasant.

And so I am so grateful for you and your deputies and what they do in our community.

And then we honor our officers from the El Dorado Springs Police Department. Chief Brett Dawn, Lieutenant John Randall and the I believe 11 officers, some full time, some reserve officers – and do you have a clue how many calls our local police department responds to? Chief Dawn gave me the numbers a few days ago and so far in 2026 our officers have responded to 3,640 calls through the month of September. And get the perspective here – we have approximately 3,500 residents in the city limits – and so far we are at 3,640 calls – that’s one per person. They will probably end up with pretty close to 5,000 calls for this year.

I think by those numbers, that makes us look like we are pretty rough and sketchy bunch of red necks.

And for those in the Dispatch office that answer the calls day and night. Thank you.

And then you have Ashley with Animal Control responds to around 350 animal calls or code violations per year.

Then there are the serious calls. Calls where our dispatchers have talked people down from taking their lives and were able to keep them on the phone until officers could intervene.

Calls where someone has gone unresponsive and they had to do CPR until medics could get there. I was on one of those calls and that officer jumped in and began CPR and unfortunately we couldn’t revive him but what a valiant effort.

Now as we wrap things up, I feel there is one more matter I have to mention. This is sobering. Last year, do you realize there were 111 law enforcement officers across our country that were killed in the line of duty. Let that number settle down on you. 111.

Last year, in our country, there were 81 fire-fighters killed in the line of duty.

Every year there is an average of 35 EMS, ambulance personnel that lose their lives, simply because vehicles are not paying attention to the lights and sirens of ambulances.

So before we let you go, I want us to have a moment of silence in memory of these men and women who gave their lives in serving us.

So to all of you men and women with a badge or ID – thank you. It is the shield that guards our community’s peace. Thank you.