Thousand Islands Emergency Rescue Service (TIERS),
was conceived as a consolidation of emergency medical services (EMS), then offered by the Clayton and LaFargeville
fire departments. Originally called Thousand Islands Emergency Medical
Services, the name was changed to Thousand Islands Emergency Rescue Service when
New York State requested that the name not include the word "medical".
Historically, volunteer fire department ambulances and Guilfoyle
Ambulance Service of Watertown have provided the River communities’ EMS coverage. For
many years, fire departments had experienced increasing difficulties recruiting Emergency Medical Technicians;
employed volunteers could not afford to lose work time, and many with families
could no longer make the hundreds of hours of sacrifice for the training
required for medical certifications. Guilfoyle’s response time from Watertown
was not life-saving in a medical emergency.
The consolidation of medical specialties into regional centers also caused ambulance transports
to be much more time consuming, and research findings indicated that a higher level of medical
training for ambulance personnel was required.
As fire chiefs sought ways to provide full-time ambulance service with the
highest level of care possible, the Town of Clayton and Town of Orleans fire districts bridged part of the gap by joining to hire
an advanced-level Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), to help cover weekday
hours. Still, it fell to a few dedicated volunteers to cover the
hundreds of medical emergencies that occurred nights and weekends.
Town officials focusing on public safety and economic development concerns joined the fire departments
and fire districts to put together a group of concerned citizens to design a solution.
After two years and hundreds of hours of collaborative effort, the Thousand Islands Emergency
Rescue Service, Inc. (TIERS) was founded. On January 1, 2003, at 12:01 AM, TIERS was in service
providing fully staffed paramedic level emergency medical service to the Towns of Clayton and
Orleans.
Our first quarters on Brooks Drive in Clayton. No garage meant that rigs ran all night in winter to stay warm.
Full staffing of an ambulance means responding within minutes to a call. TIERS provides the Paramedic--the highest level of pre-hospital care available--response umbrella to the River communities for complicated and life-threatening medical emergencies.
Our dedicated volunteers still log thousands of hours of service yearly as drivers, and provide back-up as Certified First Responders and EMTs.
Fees are now charged for TIERS' services because payroll, medical supplies, and other administrative expenses must now be paid for by TIERS, instead of coming through from the volunteer fire departments.
In May, 2003 TIERS instituted the
Safe
Guard
TM
program, which combines financial
protection with extra services, depending on the level of the donation. Visit the
Safe
Guard
TM page for more information.
TIERS continues to enlarge its scope of service to the community, including
regular visits to senior citizen facilities and community first-aid, CPR, and
Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) training for area residents, including
seasonal and year-round residents of many islands in our service area. TIERS
also operates a rescue trailer designed to be pulled by an ATV or snowmobile to
accident scenes in rough terrain, and a Medic Bike Team to respond quickly in
crowded conditions such as a street fair, fireworks display, or fair (see our
entire fleet here).
TIERS crews also
respond with the Clayton Fire
Department's fire boat Last Chance on medical emergency calls on
islands or on the water.
