Ovando residents donate to Lincoln Volunteer Ambulance

Fred and Leigh Ann Valiton, owners of the Blackfoot Commercial Company in Ovando, paid a visit to the Lincoln Volunteer Ambulance Nov. 3, to present the service with a donation from the Ovando Community.

Anonymous donors in Ovando pulled together a total of $9000 for the ambulance.

"This kind of jumped up on itself almost. We did not go out begging for this, by any means. Several in our community felt like we could put enough cash together to make it worthwhile," Fred Valiton said. "We need Lincoln Ambulance to support the Ovando and Helmville Fire Departments and their (Quick Response Unit). We need them to support us."

Leigh Ann Valiton said they hope it will inspire more donations from the area for the Lincoln Ambulance.

"If they wish to remain anonymous they can always go through us and we can do this again," she said. "I think its admirable that our community has done this. But it's going to take more than $9000, but $9000 for the first time is pretty darn good."

LVA President Aaron Birkholz was grateful for the donation, which he said is a huge thing for the ambulance.

"Even a $50 donation helps out, when you're paying almost $15,000 a year in insurance and maintenance. And we just got $60,000 worth of new radios," he said. "This is what it takes. Our ambulance would never make it just on what we get from the local mill levy and what we get from the insurance companies."

The LVA receives about $30,000 per year through a Lincoln Fire District mill levy that passed in 2016. The money from the levy goes to the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Department, which in turn contracts with the LVA for emergency medical services. However that doesn't mean the ambulance is a free service, and Birkholz said they still face continuing issue of non-payment from patients.

Birkholz said in addition to the Lincoln valley, they are the primary ambulance service for the northern third of Powell County, including Ovando and Helmville. Their coverage extends west on Highway 200 to mile marker 40 and south to the southern end of Nevada Creek Reservoir. Birkholz said the Seeley Lake Ambulance also responds to areas in the northwestern part of the county, if the call goes through the Missoula County dispatch center.

Fred Valiton estimates the Lincoln Ambulance responds to about one call week in the Ovando area., and explained that the fundraising effort came about because the community depends on the service, which doesn't receive any funding from Powell County. In 2018 voters approved a county-wide 14 mil levy to support the Powell County Ambulance Service, however, that ambulance service – now called Powell Emergency Medical Services, LLC and part of the Deer Lodge Medical Center – currently only covers the Deer Lodge area and the I-90 corridor.

In the fall of 2019, when levy went into effect, North Powell County residents argued they are paying for service they don't receive and that a portion of those funds should go to the Lincoln Ambulance for the service they provide. No agreement has yet been reached on how- or if- Powell County might provide funding to the LVA.

In a regular year the Lincoln Ambulance responds to between 30 and 50 calls in Northern Powell County. This year, calls increased across the board and they've already responded to more than 50 calls in Powell county. Birkholz and Tommy Applegate with the Helmville QRU said COVID-19 played a role in the uptick, although not as the result of cases. He said the increase came about as visitors from out of state came to Montana to escape COVID-19 spikes elsewhere, as Montanan's hit the road after Gov. Steve Bullock lifted his Stay-at-home order stay-at-home order expired April 24 and as normally routine hospital visits have been avoided.

"Now elderly people are afraid to go to hospitals or are being told to stay home with their cold, or they're scared," Birkholz said. "Then things build up and we get called because it gotten really bad."

"We depend on that ambulance every day," Fred Valiton reiterated. "These people felt it was a necessary thing to at least throw in something to help provide for that service."