The first garage, a converted Murphy Medical Center warehouse, was kindly referred to as "the barn."

"It was cold in winter and hot in the summer," said 25-year Multi-Township Emergency Medical Services veteran Nancy Huffer, speaking of the organization's first quarters. "The sleeping rooms were in a loft. It wasn't unusual to find snow on the bed in January."

Multi-Township's quarters were located along Lake Street - now Ind. 15 - "where the Marsh Supermarket meat department is," Bill Darr said.

Sanitary and storm drains weren't separated back in the late '70s, when the service began. As he recalls, it wasn't unusual to have raw sewage floating over the garage floor after a significant rain.

Darr is an advanced emergency medical technician now and Huffer is a paramedic. They, along with administrator Cindy Dobbins, have been MTEMS employees since the first ambulance run Dec. 27, 1977.

When one board of directors member heard the garage was called "the barn," he threatened to fire the next person who said it.

Of course, the term was constantly used after the warning was issued.

Like the rest of the country, Indiana's EMS was established in 1974 by a mandate from the federal government. In 1976, each county made a decision to give the business to either the trustees or the commissioners. In Kosciusko County, the township trustees took responsibility after heated debates.

Since then, various emergency medical services have been established. The trustees set up services in Mentone, Milford, Etna Green, Syracuse, North Webster, Pierceton, Leesburg and Silver Lake.

While paramedics are available in the Syracuse-Turkey Creek Township service area, only Multi-Township and North Webster paramedics have agreements to serve townships.

Paramedics are dispatched to cardiac, altered level of consciousness, trauma and diabetes-related cases.

The taxpaying citizens of Wayne and Etna townships provide the MTEMS funds.

When they weren't battling snow and water, the Warsaw-based EMS providers wrestled with the cantankerous overhead garage doors and made trips to the old Texaco station on the corner of Prairie and Buffalo streets to use the bathroom.

"It was basic service when we started," Darr said. "There was not state certification, just a national registry."

The service had three ambulances - Medics 7, 8 and 9, dispatched by the sheriff's department. Runs were announced by an ear-splitting claxon that blasted through the station until someone answered the telephone.

"We were young then and didn't mind the noise," Huffer said of the alarm that was heard for blocks.

The first ambulance run was made Dec. 27, 1977, by Oscar Schmucker and Dan Younger, who transported an 81-year-old man with a heart condition to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne.

The incident is recorded two ways - on a single page, handwritten form and in a cloth-bound ledger.

Dobbins, the first MTEMS employee and unofficial statistician, processes nine-page forms now with the use of a $25,000 computer program.

That first day there were six calls, and a total of 1,813 runs for the year.

Today, five ambulances respond to more than 7,000 calls per year.

Until 1998, Dobbins did all the scheduling, billing and filing in the office. Tony Doyle, operations manager, was hired to take off some of the load and now there are 24 full- and part-time medical employees and four office workers.

The 2304 E. Center St. quarters, started in 1982 and finished in 1983, seemed like a palace compared to "the barn."

People with cardiac troubles and broken bones were routinely treated in Fort Wayne until orthopedic specialists set up practice in Warsaw around 1978.

Darr said he never expected the volume of calls they had those first few years. Passengers were charged $40 then, compared with $275 for basic emergency response now.

Huffer and Darr said they've noticed patients are becoming younger and the kinds of illness and trauma more severe.

"We, the counties of northeast Indiana, are known as the trauma capital of the nation," Huffer said, not going into any specifics.

"You have to be strange to choose this type of job," she said. "It's more of a calling, something you want to do."

Darr maintains a sense of humor is critical to coping with some of the things they've seen and had to handle.

"You have to be able to laugh things off," he said. "No disrespect is intended, it's a way to cope."

While the 911 telephone system has made dispatches more orderly, Darr said, television programs have affected the EMS in may ways.

"The TV shows a 90-percent, 60-percent recovery from a heart attack," he said. "The reality is 5 percent."

In 2001, three people survived cardiac arrest out of 49 reported.

The switch from gasoline-powered to diesel engines in the ambulances has been a big step forward for the service.

The "old" ambulances were little more than modified conversion vans with extended roofs. Two gas-powered ambulances caught on fire because the exhaust system was too close to the floors of the vans. The specially designed diesel models also provide a lot more room in the patient area.

Most runs respond to people age 60 to 80 years old - and the types of calls come in sets of three - with the service responding to, for example, three cardiac runs in a row or three accidents in sequence.

"You know if a certain type of call comes in, two more will follow," Dobbins said. "If you weren't superstitious before, you are after working here after a while."

"The full moon brings more runs, too," Huffer said, adding weight to the metaphysical aspect of the work.

Having 2-1/2 decades in an EMS is not traditional in the adrenaline-charged atmosphere.

"It's a young person's business," Huffer said, "a steppingstone to nursing or becoming a doctor."

"We have many people who have worked here for 15 to 20 years," Dobbins said. "Most only leave if they move out of the area.

"We're truly like a family. There are things we can only talk about with each other, because of confidentiality, or because no one else would understand." [[In-content Ad]]