Borough of Cresskill
Ambulance

Emergency: Dial 911
Madison Avenue
Cresskill, New Jersey 07626

There are, on average, 230 calls for an ambulance each year in Cresskill. Every one is answered--by volunteers. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Sometimes the whistle has to sound three blasts a second time. That’s not the fault of the people on the corps. It’s the fault of the people not on the corps.

It’s been getting increasingly difficult to find volunteers for the ambulance corps. Consequently, the people now serving are answering calls more often, there is the ever present danger that no one will be around to answer a call. At one time both the volunteer fire department and the volunteer ambulance corps, which was begun in 1942, were covered by people who worked in the town--shopkeepers, contractors, municipal employees, and so on. But there are fewer people who remain in town and there are fewer people who volunteer for the corps.

Two ambulances are in operation at the present time. Corps members, all with more than a hundred hours of training as emergency management technicians at the county Police and Fire Academy, are Jean Bibbo, Robert Bonanno, Lori Cerame, Clifford Cernack, Laurence Davino, Jennifer Friedman, Alison Hanabergh, Ruth Jones, Geraldine Kelly, Donald Kraker, Valerie Lynch, Michael O’Loughlin, Rosmarie O’Loughlin, Glenn Petillo, Paul Quadri, Susan Romisher, C. Michael Van Tine, and Carl Wallin.

Since 1942 the corps has been meeting once a month and drilling twice a month, most recently in their six year old facility on Madison Avenue, west of the firehouse. Before their new building was completed, the corps was housed in the building where the Saigon Noodle House is today, on Union Avenue. That had been the old firehouse and was later a short-lived recreation center for the borough’s teenagers. Earlier, the corps’ headquarters were on Dogwood Lane behind the Borough Hall.

Nobody wants to think about needing the Volunteer Ambulance Corps. It’s too painful to contemplate. But they’re there, waiting to help Cresskill’s people, and when they’re needed they are welcome and consoling. Cresskill needs their help. They need Cresskill’s help.