Baier Is March Responder Of The Month

news1@ulyssesnews.com

The March Responder of the month is Grant County EMS Director Jeff Baier. Baier was previously selected as the February 6 Responder of the Week.

Baier joined the Grant County Fire Department when the county hired a full-time fire chief, and he was nominated by Alayna Mancias.

In her nomination email to The Ulysses News, Mancias said, “He exemplifies all the qualities that responder of the month should have - patience, knowledge, dependability, and above all else compassion. Jeff is the director of EMS, but that doesn't mean he sits behind his desk much.

“He is constantly responding to calls, answering the millions of questions citizens have for him, and volunteering his time to teach Grant County Firemen as well as future EMTs in their courses. Jeff is never without his radio and drops everything if someone else needs him - he is never ‘off duty.’ Jeff Baier is an incredible asset to Ulysses, Kansas, and our town is better because of all of the work he puts in.”

Before Baier became a firefighter, EMT and EMS/Emergency Management Director, he worked 24 years in the grain business.

“One day it wasn’t fun any more and I said I gotta do something different, so I worked for a fumigation company for a year,” he said. “And then they called me one day, one of the full-time EMTs was leaving and said, ‘We’re going to have an opening, do you want to apply for an EMT job?’ I thought, yeah, I can do that.”

At one time the fire department was located in what is now the EMS building at Oklahoma and Missouri streets. The fire department moved near the airport in 2000 and moved to its current location on East Oklahoma Avenue in 2019. The fire department is still 100 percent volunteer.

The National Highway Safety Council conducted a study of what was needed for pre-hospital care, which led to the formation of EMS how it’s known today.

“Basically, our job is we get called and we take care of them from the house to the hospital,” said Baier, who started his medical career in 1997, became EMS Director in January 2022 and Emergency Management Coordinator in March 2022.

Divisions of EMS include Emergency Medical Responder (the lowest certified level); Emergency Medical Technician (EMT); EMT-I, and finally Paramedics. Baier said Paramedics became more noticed in the 1970s with television shows like ‘Emergency,’ but a lot of people don’t know exactly what EMS does.

Each emergency responsder who is selected as Responder of the Week is in the running for Responder of the Month every month, and each Responder of the Month is then eligible for Responder of the Year. Winners are picked randomly from all the current nominees via a digital application to be Responder of the Month.

If you would like to nominate someone for this honor please submit your nomination to news2@ulyssesnews.com. Nominees can be law enforcement officers, 911 dispatchers, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, military personnel, public health professionals and utility line workers.

If you would like to be a part of this program contact the Ulysses News.

The Responder of the Month program is to show our appreciation for the job they do each and every day.