YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY BABY !

Ambulance service has been provided in the Town of Berlin for as long as almost anyone can remember.  Harry Miller has been involved with emergency services in Berlin for a long, long time.  In a recent conversation with Harry, he "...remembered when there was little training of the volunteer personnel, and the Police Chief's cruiser also served as the Town's ambulance.  The patient was loaded into the rear of the Chief's station wagon for transport to the hospital." 

Dispatching of medical assistance was done from the Police Chief's home using the old red telephone and the Town's siren.  The responders often included members of the local Boy Scout Explorer group.

A formal emergency medical and rescue group was established about 45 years ago.  In  1958 the Berlin Rescue Squad was organized to meet the Town's need for improved quality medical care and to satisfy the increasing number of medical emergencies.

The majority of the emergency medical training of the Rescue Squad members in the early days took place at Marlboro Hospital.  The hospital had a reserve medical company assigned there, and numbered among its  long-time members was Berlin's Harry Miller.

Since those early days of the Berlin Rescue Squad, the State has codified the training requirements of all personnel providing emergency medical care.  The result has been a highly trained Berlin Rescue Squad which has among it's members over 30 EMTs, two paramedics, and a number of First Responders.

As the training has improved, so has the equipment.  Over the years the Rescue Squad has purchased, often as a used vehicle, a number of different ambulances.  The ambulance in the picture was purchased in 1977 and was the first of the new-technology vehicles used by the Rescue Squad.  The members of the Rescue Squad shown include Henry Wheeler, Harry Miller, Bob McDonald, Peggy Ulrich, Carl Matthew, George Pendergast, Howard Spaulding, Bruce Bartlett, and Kenny Miller.

Today, the Berlin Rescue Squad is equipped with an ambulance and a rescue truck that matches in quality the equipment of any rescue squad in central Massachusetts serving towns of comparable demographics.

The Berlin Rescue Squad of the fifty's met the needs of the fifty's.  Today, the Berlin Rescue Squad is trained and equipped to meet the current needs of the new century, and is organized to anticipate and to meet the changing needs of the future.