Photo courtesy of Keweenaw County Sheriff’s Office Keweenaw County Sheriff Curt Pennala is requesting residents consider volunteering to become first responders. First responders, he said are desperately needed.

KEWEENAW COUNTY – Keweenaw County Sheriff Curt Pennala said four of the county’s five townships are facing critical shortages of first responders.

“Fortunately,” said Pennala, “the Search & Rescue seems to be well-staffed right now, but particularly, what the county needs right now – like badly – is medical first responders. These are the people who go to a scene prior to the EMS getting there, assessing the patient and starting that first level of care.”

For example, Allouez Township, the most populous township in the county, with a population of just under 2,000, has only only one or two first responders, Pennala said. At the same time, Sherman Township with just 96 residents, presently has seven or eight first responders. “They’re doing prime,” Pennala said, “but there’s other areas, like Copper Harbor, who are struggling to find people to help out with it. We need to get more membership out of our public to help out.”

Pennala said training is available free of charge for anyone wanting to become a first responder. Typically, there is a training session conducted locally once a year, some of which are what he referred to as hybrid.

“You can do some online, and some in-person,” he said.

Pennala went on to say that the agency a volunteer applies to will pay for the training.

Pennala said occasionally someone requests an application at the Sheriff’s Office, for which he is glad, because some volunteers are comfortable with one aspect but not another.

“Like the ice rescue training we had last week,” he said, “not everybody’s comfortable going out on the ice, or going into the water, but you need people on shore, operating ropes, people on lookout for spectators approaching too close to a scene.”

Shortages of emergency volunteers is not new to the county. In fact, Pennala has discussed on several occasions the need has been steadily increasing for six years, when COVID-19 restrictions began attracting people to the county from out of the area.

In April, 2022, Pennala began efforts to organize the Keweenaw County Search and Rescue in response to increasing emergency response calls to the Sheriff’s Office. Pennala said because of the attraction and the topographical features of the Keweenaw, it draws a lot of outdoor enthusiasts. In the last few years, during the COVID outbreak, and even prior to that, he added, the number of enthusiasts has been dramatically increasing every year. Pennala’s efforts to organize a county-wide search and rescue were justified a few months later, when the Sheriff’s Office responded to three emergency calls in as many days over the 4th of July weekend. A month later, the agency conducted two water rescues simultaneously after receiving distress calls from a kayaker and boater in Grant Township.

At a Keweenaw Heartlands update in Eagle Harbor last July, Keweenaw County resident and first responder Bryce Holden suggested the Department of Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy seek ways to address safety and first responder resources in the county as the Heartlands Project will mean potential increases in tourism. Holden said emergency responders are already stretched thin and emphasized that emergency serves are primarily volunteers.