The council continues to meet via Zoom due to pandemic restrictions. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s borough council meets for its first regular session of the month Wednesday night.
Here’s what’s on the agenda, and what’s not.
The council is expected to renew its contract for EMT ambulance services. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s borough council meets Wednesday with a relatively light agenda.
There’s still something missing: promised changes to the public comment protocol.
Little Silver made some big metallic noise for emergency personnel on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic Thursday evening. More →
With the sound of sirens blaring in the distance, residents of Jackson Street joined their neighbors across Fair Haven in giving a noisy, pots-and-pans cheer to healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle Thursday night.
A Little Silver ambulance outside Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Little Silver plans to salute first-responders on the frontlines of the COVID-19 battle next month with a townwide “Light the Night” celebration.
The event will also serve as a fundraiser for the borough’s all-volunteer fire department and first aid squad.
Emergency workers packed the front parking area for the surprise as hospital personnel responded from upper-floor windows. (Photos by Allan Bass. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank-area police and volunteer firefighters delivered a massive surprise cheer to healthcare workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 battle at Riverview Medical Center Friday evening.
The borough’s firetrucks, joined by gear from at least nine surrounding towns, twice sounded their horns in unison as staffers left and arrived for a shift change. Several hundred participants, most wearing protective masks, cheered and blew kisses from the parking lot as hospital employees in surgical masks and gowns acknowledged the love from upper floor windows.
Red Bank Fire Chief Scott Calabrese organized the unannounced event, which drew fire, police and first aiders from Fair Haven, Little Silver, Sea Bright, Shrewsbury, Rumson, Middletown, Tinton Falls, Eatontown and Oceanport.
The aim, he said, was “to say ‘thank you for your courage on the front lines of the battle.'”
(See more photos by Allan Bass and John T. Ward, below.)
The Shrewsbury First Aid Squad is based on Haddon Avenue.
Press release from the Shrewsbury First Aid Squad
The Shrewsbury First Aid Squad is looking for volunteers, and hoping to make signing up more attractive.
Bucky Moran at home earlier this week. Below, Moran gets a hug from one of his saviors, Paramedic Lori Corson. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The last thing Richard ‘Bucky’ Moran remembers prior to his heart attack last month was asking a motorist to move his car from the City Centre Shopping Center in Red Bank, where he works part-time.
So he knew nothing of the Edison Township fireman who, while driving by, saw Moran crash to the pavement and pulled over to start doing CPR. He didn’t know about the Red Bank policeman who happened to be coming out of a store at the mall, and had a defibrillator in his patrol car. He was unaware of the deputy fire chief who also pulled over and contributed the CPR effort, during which Moran was revived but “coded” again at least three times. And he’s a complete blank about the EMTs and paramedics who intubated him and blasted him with twice the standard amount of juice to get his ticker working again.
But on Wednesday night, the retired mail carrier and current school crossing guard got to meet, and hug, many of his Good Samaritans, at a packed-room meeting of the borough council.
Jay Campbell, center, chats with MONOC paramedics Mike Welsh, left, and Marcelo Aguirre during his visit to the Fair Haven First Aid Squad Thursday night. Below, Campbell poses with his family and the emergency responders who teamed up to save him from cardiac arrest earlier this year. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The bug had been making its way through the Campbell residence in Fair Haven when Jay Campbell told his wife he wasn’t feeling well and was heading to bed early that Sunday evening in January.
So a short time later, when Leslie Campbell heard a gurgling sound, she raced to grab the pail she’d used to get her son through the illness. But the instant she reached the bedroom and saw her husband lying with his mouth agape and his eyes rolled upward, she knew something far more terrible than the flu had gotten hold of him.
Minutes later, 59-year-old Jay Campbell was, by the metrics of medicine, dead. But two young cops – responding to an “open-line” call in which the 911 dispatcher could only hear the sound of a woman shouting the name ‘Jay’ – began what became a rapid-response team effort to bring him back to life.
Kim Ambrose, center, shares a laugh at the Fair Haven Firehouse Tuesday, shortly after she was re-appointed a police matron in Fair Haven and Rumson. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Kim Ambrose has a lot of titles, but only one she gets teased about.
Mother of three, EMT at Monmouth Park Racetrack, volunteer with the Little Silver and Fair Haven First Aid squads, founder of the Little Silver EMS Cadets program (featured in a redbankgreen story last July), part-time police dispatcher in Rumson, class 1 special police officer in Rumson, police matron in Fair Haven and Rumson: guess which one of those makes her cringe a little.
“It sounds old and stodgy, right?” she says of the ‘matron’ moniker. “It sounds like Helga’s going to come after you.”