‘Writing history’: Huntington officials honor one of Indiana’s first EMS units

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (WANE) – When the first EMTs began operating in Huntington County, all they had to work with were two high-top Dodge Tradesman ambulance vans, a seven-digit emergency line in lieu of 911, and an approximate at best address system that did nothing to help with run times when they did receive an actual call for help.

“The numbering system wasn’t even available yet,” said Steve Caley, one of those first EMTs. “We were getting (addresses) like, ‘The Jones residence, past the big rock on Rural Road 8.”

That was 1974.

Monday, officials with the City of Huntington and Huntington County gathered at Parkview Huntington to honor Huntington’s Emergency Medical Services workers 50 years after those first EMTs took to the streets.

Officials said it was one of the state’s first EMS units at the time.

Huntington County Commissioner Tom Wall and Huntington Mayor Richard Strick shared in the reading of a proclamation to members of Parkview Huntington’s EMS as well as Huntington area firefighters and other first responders.

“Nurses and physicians have been around for hundreds of years, hundreds of years throughout the world even,” said Carla Gebert, EMS Manager at Parkview Health who oversees several counties, including Huntington. “So, EMTs and paramedics are fairly new to the medical community.”

“What makes that so awesome is that when this service started, they were literally writing history,” Gebert continued. “They were writing the foundation that we still use today in pre-hospital care. We built from their foundation.”

Before the creation of an EMS service, funeral directors in the area would provide ambulance service to those in need – but that was little more than throwing a cot into hearse to make it an ambulance and running a patient to a hospital.

With the advent of an EMS service, care was then provided at the scene before getting a patient to doctors and nurses.

Caley, who initially became an EMT to better his prospects at a law enforcement career, was one of six who trained in Huntington to form that first EMS unit. Instead of law enforcement, he stayed in the medical field and worked in emergency medicine for 43 years.

“It really got into my blood,” he said.

He also had a front seat to all the advancements in the field that came along the way.

The first 911 call in Indiana was placed in Huntington . There also came advanced training, then even more advanced training on top of new protocols and new medicine.

New techniques in treating patients were developed, along with new technology as ambulances grew from those high-top vans to the mobile medical care vehicles they are today.

There came the creation of paramedicine and paramedics – and now in Huntington a paramedic is in an ambulance during every run.

“It’s amazing to see how the service has grown over 50 years,” Caley said. “And again, the different advancements I’ve seen, and the care for patients from the primitive care that we really provided in the early 70s to what you see today.”

Though now retired, Caley says he still gets together with some of the other EMTs from that first generation. Most of them have children that have grown and entered the medical field like their parents, and he has one piece of advice for those looking to further the field during the next 50 years.

“Make sure you get to college and get your EMT training through a college degree,” he said. “Have that college training under your belt.”

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