Flatbush Hatzoloh: Heeding The Call - The Events That Shaped Us

we are the absolute Mutual Aid of the 911 system where no matter what the type of call is the city knows that hatel is a resource that all neighborhoods especially floppers with our resources can be able to goow to any neighborhood and to help out with any scene when Co hit we went up another 35 calls a day that's almost double it was almost like certain days felt like a war zone and we we didn't know when this would end and how long more this would go on [Music] H wouldn't accept the fact of having a radio system we had a dispatching machine in my house we were dispatches my wife not me 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. very people come home they start thinking about themselves we had only telephone com Communications with the dispatcher as time went on we grew the beepers response time was held back because of beepers because when the base would call you you'd get a beep you see the phone number you have to go find the pay phone somewhere obviously we them have phones and if I a pay phone I make a phone call to the disp where am I going so of course that increased the time D walked in one day to a meeting to a a central meeting that we were having and said it's time that we should have radios like the firemen and the policemen have and everyone started laughing and when the chuckling stopped they basically told us that we were dreaming scaming and this is not something for Hat hatsa radio system like they couldn't fathom it this was not in their it was not in their mindset we picked up three used walkie-talkies and one used mobile unit Cole came in they dispatched the call on the radio Ze Tran happened to be right around the corner from the call and he walked in literally while they were still speaking to the dispatcher they were amazed like how did you get say how'd you know like that was the beginning of the radio system and the rest this history it was in our own channel Vol ambulance qu were joined in with school bus drivers so we could have a baby not breathing and the dispatcher has to wait for somebody ordering pizza for a school bus and when he's finished then so that couldn't that couldn't go on Queen's member q39 his name was Jud mansbach all sham and he worked for the FCC and he was very instrumental in getting us our own private fre quc and that's a frequency we still have until today when we started having three four ambulances in the streets when the calls from 23 a week were 2030 a week we realized we needed storage we realized we had to hire a secretary we realized it just became much bigger than a small little volunteer organization we really had no central place to store our supplies I was a Service Unit I was 17 years old when I I joined and I used to carry equipment in my trunk and would go around from ambulance location to ambulance location where they were parked for me the Catalyst was when they built the Ocean Avenue garage that was a massive building before the Ocean Avenue garage we just had the Avenue M and Ocean Parkway garage which didn't house anything other than the tiny bathroom and the ambulance in about 1995 we decided to knock down the building we started a fundraising campaign I have to give credit to as I know him as Uncle Joe Joe essis he was the person behind the fundraising my Uncle Joe ess's was my mentor my uncle my teacher my friend I can only imagine the excitement and pride that came with receiving the first ambulance and establishing the first building it's a testament to Uncle Joe's perseverance and Leadership that he was able to bring people together and make that a vision a reality we had room for six ambulances we moved in in 1999 we had as much storage as we needed and it just changed everything we had places to do training before that we had nowhere where to do training we had all the equipment all the ambulances were inside that changed everything in iella from the first 15 years of its being [Music] February of 1993 which was the first explosion that we had down in the World Trade Center hotel's response there was an amazing response it wasn't a Friday so it was definitely that we were giving of ourselves we didn't have to make it into shabas but our response was there 911 of course was a major response expion I think that what's amazing is that we are the absolute Mutual Aid of the 911 system where no matter what the type of call is the city knows that hatel is a resource that all neighborhoods especially flush with our resources can be able to go to any neighborhood and to help out with any scene [Music] we were about 150 members strong when I started in 1996 but Co really proved to us that there's so much more that we need to do for the community each and every one of us in our own way helped shape and mold the direction of the community and where we are today we got hit with no warning we had the members the service units everybody instead of giving giving 5 6 hours people were giving 18 to 20 hours a day you were looking ahead literally day by day we didn't know what tomorrow would bring we didn't know what the evening would ring there were times that we were jumping from Co to co without even finishing one on the same block where there was another critical patient during Co and after Co many many people came over to me and said it's unbelievable how I heard the sirens 24 hours a day middle of the night in the mornings it was mindboggling that all day hat was flying back and forth I'd say 100 times a day or even more going back and forth that's when it hit the people noticed that hatal is part of our life the fear of the unknown was the hardest part you didn't know whether you'd be alive in a week from now because Co was killing so many people when our family were not feeling well when people were sick when people were uh unfortunately going to the hospitals we were a source of strength for the community at large and they kept reaching out to us and we just never gave up we became as one family and I believe now after Co we are a much stronger organization a much stronger community