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hours of driving time to tack on. You can only miss, say, two classes or so, or you fail. That's one heck of a commitment in time and monetary resources for only being paid $1.55 per hour to be on call for an emergency. That's just not realistic."
• These hours requirements, as well as the knowledge and skills expected of EMTs, have increased significantly in recent decades. This means that if an emergency happens in a rural place, the people responding are likely to be much more qualified to help than they used to be--but if there aren't enough people available to respond, there may come a time when no help comes.
• Last weekend, the Faulk County Ambulance received a call to take a patient to Aberdeen. They had the required number of people to make the trip, but no extra; finding people to be on call over the weekend is often difficult. They had just crossed back into Faulk County when another call came in. If it had come in much earlier, there wouldn't have been anyone available to respond.
• This is only one of the many close calls they've had.
• "It hasn't happened yet, but there will come a day when we'll be stretched too thin, and we won't have an ambulance crew available," Hericks said.
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• A more convenient option for training
• That's the reason Hericks and others in the SDEMTA are pushing for online EMT training courses.
• "You can get a doctorate online," he said. "I know plenty of people who've got their nursing degrees with online coursework. So if you can do those things, why can't we have our EMTs do the same thing?"
• The advantage of an online course is that people can fit the training into their own schedules, doing coursework at whatever time of day is most convenient, Herrick said.
• For parts of the course that require in-person attendance, instructors could be brought to the students, or the students could travel for one or two sessions. "It will be much easier to get people to maybe one or two events, rather than have to cram it all into several weekly hours of mandatory-attendance classroom coursework," he said.
• Pending approval from the SDEMTA executive board, the trial run of EMT certification and licensing will be tried in Faulk County. Hericks said he and the District 4 committee are confident of board approval.
• "If all goes according to plan the success or failure of this project is on the shoulders of the Faulk County Ambulance, so no pressure here," Herrick said.
• A program in North Dakota that allows current EMTs to take some portions of

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