When will you need help of volunteers?

A dramatic rescue at the top of Mount Frissell in the Taconic Range a couple of weeks ago was described in last week’s Lakeville Journal by one of the hikers, Ann vonHoorn of New Preston, who was in the injured person’s party. The hikers are eight women who get together for an outing every Monday in the summer and fall. One misstep on a challenging hiking trail turned a weekly celebration of nature into an exercise in emergency response and critical care. The outcome for vonHoorn’s colleague was a successful rescue because of the immediate reaction to the hikers’ cell phone call for help from a wide range of emergency responders in our area: the Lakeville Hose Company, the state police, Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service and Sheffield responders. Most of these emergency workers were volunteers and spent hours cutting their way into the shortest path to the injured woman, then carrying her down the trail to the road and an ambulance that took her to Sharon Hospital for care.What were you doing a couple of Mondays ago? It could be a daunting task just to remember that for some of us, unless we were part of a group that plucked an injured person from a mountain trail and brought her to safety. Often such rescues happen quietly, without fanfare, without people understanding the heroic actions of their neighbors who volunteer for area emergency services.This is a season not just of falling leaves and elections, but also of annual appeals from the area nonprofit organizations as they send out their pleas for help in meeting their expenses for the year. Remember the important nature of so much of the work done by volunteers in the Northwest Corner when the appeals arrive and do as much as possible to support them. Whether they come from the fire or ambulance teams, emergency, social or health services, child or geriatric care centers or any other support agency, they need those annual donations in order to survive themselves. They cannot be taken for granted.