{"id":4673,"date":"2015-04-22T00:10:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T05:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wordpress\/?p=4673"},"modified":"2015-04-22T00:21:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T05:21:49","slug":"cetronia-ambulance-corps-to-celebrate-60-years-of-saving-lives-in-lehigh-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=4673","title":{"rendered":"Cetronia Ambulance Corps To Celebrate 60 Years Of Saving Lives In Lehigh County"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Photos and logo provided courtesy of Keenan-Nagle Advertising with reprint rights permitted for media use.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Dinner Gala To Commemorate Progress, Training, Professionalism<\/em><\/h3>\n

Cetronia, Pa.<\/em> — When supporters of Cetronia Ambulance Corps gather for its 60th<\/sup> anniversary dinner at Brookside Country Club on April 25<\/span>, the celebration will be about much more than six decades of outstanding performance that has brought regional, state and national recognition to the organization.<\/p>\n

It will be about people like Pat Earley Ward, who wouldn\u2019t be here today if not for the training, experience and professionalism of Cetronia\u2019s emergency responders. Just ask her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt in my mind that they saved her life,\u201d said Gary Ward, remembering that night in January 2008 when his wife dropped her book and slumped in her chair. Ward, who had been watching a movie that kept him up later than his usual bedtime, knew something was desperately wrong.<\/p>\n

He laid her on the floor and called Lehigh County 9-1-1, which connected him immediately with the Cetronia communications center. Dispatchers kept him on the line, telling him how to do chest compressions while he awaited the arrival of paramedics.<\/p>\n

They were there less than three minutes after he placed the call.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey brought her back. She was dead. She didn\u2019t have a heartbeat,\u201d Ward said as he sat in his office at Ward\u2019s Oriental Rugs in Allentown. \u201cWithout them, she wouldn\u2019t be here to enjoy our success, to enjoy her friends and family. She wouldn\u2019t be able to enjoy her 6-year-old grandson, and he wouldn\u2019t be able to enjoy her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Larry<\/a>Cetronia has always been on the cutting-edge of technology and training and that commitment has saved thousands of lives over the decades, said CEO Larry Wiersch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started in the 1970s, cardiac arrest patients almost always died or they had major heart damage,\u201d he said. \u201cNow many more of our patients live. There is a trust between the hospitals and our people. The doctors know our people know what they are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been like that since April 22, 1955 when a group of 20 suburban Allentown residents came together to form a new emergency service for western Lehigh County and supplement the only then-existing ambulance service operated by Allentown General Hospital. Working from a service station in their South Whitehall Township village, they reached out to the American Red Cross to get the first aid training they needed to begin.<\/p>\n

The history of the service since then is as colorful as it is impressive.<\/p>\n

The first ambulance was a 1948 Buick purchased for $1,500 from a Bucks County car dealer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to give it to us but we told him we would pay for it,\u201d said Wilmer McNabb, one of only two surviving founders. \u201cOur second ambulance was a Cadillac we got through an S&H Green Stamp drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first year they responded to 29 calls. Today they respond to about 50,000 annually.<\/p>\n

The service was officially chartered in 1962, when they answered 390 calls. Cetronia always had its own communications center, but in the early days the dispatchers often had to call duty crews at home. There were no radios or pagers.<\/p>\n

In 1967 Cetronia opened a $100,000 facility at 3939 Broadway (then Hamilton Street). Call volume had reached 3,527 per year. Throughout most of the early years Cetronia funded its operations with hoagie sales, and crew members would take boxes of the sandwiches to manufacturing plants around Allentown to sell at lunch hour, McNabb remembers. \u201cOne guy told us once that we were more well-known for our hoagies than our ambulances,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

In the early 1970s Cetronia introduced EMTs, or Emergency Medical Technicians, to the crews.<\/p>\n

By 1974 there were four Cadillac ambulances, a Dodge van unit with radio communications to the hospitals, and an $80,000 Mobile Emergency room in the Cetronia fleet.<\/p>\n

In the early 1980s it was one of the first ambulance corps in Pennsylvania to add paramedics to its response teams.<\/p>\n

Growth has continued throughout the 2000s. In 2008 Cetronia introduced its High Performance EMS System,\u00a0\u00a0 a sophisticated program that uses predictive modeling and looks at historical call data to strategically place ambulances at various locations throughout the service area to cut down on response times. The locations are all based on call and date tracking and updated regularly to keep them current, which allows Cetronia to constantly rotate their ambulances, providing a \u201cHealth on Wheels\u201d model of EMS delivery.<\/p>\n

\"Cetronia<\/a>The operations, crew sizes and call volume continued to increase along with the Lehigh County population, and when Cetronia moved into its new, $10 million, 68,000-square-foot facility at 4300 Broadway in July 2014, the organization had 150 full-volunteer- and part-time responders and administrative employees, 19 ambulances, 18 wheelchair-accessible vans, a supervisors command vehicle, a Special Operations Truck, a Bicycle Medic team and three medical cars for non-emergency transports.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about how far we have come in a relatively short time, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d Wiersch said. \u201cWe still do have our volunteers who come out religiously on evenings, weekends and in the summer. We are very proud of our volunteer roots\u201d.<\/p>\n

McNabb, a Bethlehem Steel railroad retiree who remains active with the organization, says the growth continues to amaze him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really just started to serve Cetronia and the immediate area,\u201d he said, recalling at least one person who told crew members they were crazy to start the service. \u201cIt just grew so fast, it\u2019s unbelievable. If someone would have told me back then that we would have a $10 million building someday, I would have agreed that we were crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cetronia\u2019s \u201cHealth On Wheels Gala 60th<\/sup> Anniversary Celebration\u201d will be held Saturday, April 25<\/span> at Brookside Country Club.\u00a0 Doors open at 6 p.m.<\/span> Dinner will be followed by a Casino Night with Silent Auction and Raffle. Tickets are $300 per couple, $175 individual. All proceeds support Cetronia\u2019s life saving operations.\u00a0 Please call 610-530-5511<\/a> or email <\/em>stibitzc@cetronia.org<\/em><\/a> to reserve your seats now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cetronia Ambulance is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3 non-profit organization<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

For More Information:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Keenan, President<\/p>\n

Keenan-Nagle Advertising<\/p>\n

1301 S. 12th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

Allentown, Pa.<\/p>\n

610-797-7100 ext. 2001<\/a><\/p>\n

mkeenan@keenannagle.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photos and logo provided courtesy of Keenan-Nagle Advertising with reprint rights permitted for media use.) Dinner Gala To Commemorate Progress, Training, Professionalism Cetronia, Pa. — When supporters of Cetronia Ambulance … Continue reading Cetronia Ambulance Corps To Celebrate 60 Years Of Saving Lives In Lehigh County<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley","category-press-release-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cetronia-Logo.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}