Gonzales County ESD 1 ends membership of eight rescue team members

The Gonzales County Emergency Services District No. 1 rescue team terminated the membership of eight rescue teams members for failing to meet training and participation requirements, executive director Eddie Callendar Jr. said Tuesday, Feb. 21.

Callendar said the eight individuals terminated did not participate in at least 20 hours of training per year and did not take part in at least 25 percent of “calls” as defined by the district. They will be required to turn in all of their district-issued gear by March 19.

“There is nothing personal against these guys and I hope they do not harbor ill feelings against me or against the district,” Callendar told the Inquirer. “We have certain standards we must abide by and if they wish to meet them, we are open to having them back as members, but it must be by the same terms everyone else lives by.”

That decision to cut the eight individuals from the rescue team’s roster via a Feb. 14 letter from Callendar has resulted in a backlash against Callendar and other ESD leaders on social media by the dismissed members, with at least one member of the ESD board of directors announcing her intent to resign from the organization.

Glenn Glass, owner of D&G Automotive & Diesel, said he dedicated 30 years of his life to the rescue team and feels betrayed by the ESD leadership. He was one of those notified by letter of his termination.

“We should have had time to make up our training and get everything straight,” Glass said. “No one notified me of anything until I got the letter. They retrofitted all of their SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) to fit this past year and backdated the logs from last year instead of telling anyone, ‘Hey, you’re behind and not up to snuff.’ I was just told, ‘If you would come to the business meetings, you would know.’ They didn’t give us the common courtesy of letting us know.

“They’ve busted up a team that we have each other’s back. We’re not in it for glory or prestige or compensation. We’re the guys who, when everyone is running from the disaster, we’re running to it. We don’t think twice about it because when someone needs help, what difference does it make if some people are behind on a few meetings?”

“I know in one of the meetings they talked about SOPs, there were some members that weren’t there and never got any notification on that,” added Jason Haile, another terminated member. “I just think the way they handled this was not in a very professional manner. I know one board member actually resigned because of it.”

“My resignation from the GCESD#1 as treasurer is not taken lightly, but I feel it is the right move for me,” Christina Jahns posted on her Facebook page. “While I appreciate the impact being a part of this organization has made on the community and myself, I no longer feel it is a fit for me. After seeing the postings on social media regarding the letter received by volunteer rescue members which included my name in the heading, I felt this was done without my knowledge and with no prior notification that this would be taking place.

“I began with Gonzales County Emergency Services as a volunteer EMT for several years and hope to continue to serve the citizens of Gonzales in my other volunteer organizations.”

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Callendar said when he first became executive director of the organization in May 2019, it was one of his early goals to “provide protection for the rescue volunteers and recognize they are all working guys.”

“None of them are wealthy and it would be a shame if something happened to one of them while out on a call and they became injured, disabled or killed and were doing it in capacity of volunteer,” Callendar said. “The Legislature created the Texas Emergency Services Retirement System, or TESRS, and there are 241 first responder groups in the state that are participating in it. The district commissioners voted to enroll our rescue division personnel in TESRS about two years because we thought it to be beneficial and it would reward them for taking part in our organization and let them know they are appreciated.”

Callendar said TESRS allows ESD 1 to cover each active responder with $100,000 in life insurance if they are killed in the line of duty, as well as some disability benefits if they are injured in the line of duty as well as some retirement income after 20 years of service. The cost to the district is $36 per month per individual, or nearly $9,000 per year to cover a maximum of 20 volunteers.
He said the district must provide an opportunity for volunteers to get up to at least 48 hours of training per year, while participants must complete at least 20 hours of training and take part in one-fourth of the organization’s calls for service.

“We did that and explained to them when we joined TESRS that all of them filled out applications to be a part of the rescue team and explained that here are your rules and your commitment to be a part of the group,” Callendar said.

After one year, a special board had to be organized to administer the program and certify those who qualify and a number of participants were found to be “deficient” for failing to meet the requirements. However, all 20 were certified, but told they had to make their numbers in order to remain certified, Callendar said, adding that latitude was taken to determine what was considered a “call” to help out those who work full-time day jobs and still wish to volunteer.

“We realize a lot of our volunteers have a lot of difficulty making volunteer calls in daytime, so we defined calls as when rescue is called out between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Monday through Friday or on weekends,” Callendar said. “If they go out on a call during the daytime, it will count towards their 25 percent of calls, but missing a daytime call will not count against them.

“Also, if they are volunteering to drive around the disabled at Come and Take It or they worked Float Fest, that counted as calls, too. They were able to make up to 24 hours of being on call that weekend. We have gone out of our way to make it easier for our volunteers to reach making one out of every four ‘calls.’”

Callendar said the organization met in October 2022 to put together standard operating procedures for the rescue team in an effort to be as professional and organized as the EMS side of operations, which is comprised of paid personnel.

“According to our new regulations, what it takes to be a member of rescue is you must be 18, have a good driving record, take part in 20 hours of training and 25 percent of calls per year,” Callendar said. “The board met and looked at the numbers and we still have people who have not made their 20 hours of training or calls or some combination thereof.”

Callendar said the board felt it would be “unwise” for liability and safety reasons to allow anyone who fails to maintain their training or call participation to continue to be part of the team, hence the letter being sent out to terminate their membership.

“One person cannot go do an auto extrication by himself,” Callendar said. “You must have some people monitoring the stability of vehicle, some people watching for sparks, some people cutting, some pushing and some pulling. It is a team effort. If you don’t practice with the team, then over time, you are not part of the team. Lives are at stake here.

“Some of the guys who got their feelings hurt have done a lot of stuff for us in the past, but we are not living in the past,” Callendar said. “If they were to go out on a call today and things were to go wrong, and instead of extricating a patient, one was to get crushed, a lawyer is going to say to me, ‘let me see your training records.’ My job is to limit district liability and to ensure that our training is met.

“The board said we need to terminate these eight guys who are behind on their training and on calls. As executive director following through on our policy, it was the only conclusion I could come up with as well.”

Callendar said he “probably could have handled it better and talked to each member individually rather than sending out a letter, but some of them I never see around here.”

“The outcome would still have been the same,” Callendar said. “We are not booting them for the fun of booting them. We hope, above all else, they would see the importance of training and camaraderie. We have to have standards. We are not shooting from the hip anymore, but trying to be organized and professional.

“We have the same guys making calls every year consistently, day in and day out,” Callendar added. “They may not be on every call, but they are all part of the rescue team and they communicate with each other and work hard as a team.”

He said those individuals who have been dismissed from the rescue team will be offered a chance to regain membership if they are willing to and can meet the training and call requirements. He noted the ESD holds meetings on the first and third Wednesday of each month.

“The first is designed to be a business meeting, but at the end, we will cover some topic, like communications or where to cut an electric vehicle without getting shocked, so there is a training component to the business meeting,” Callendar said. “The third Wednesday is always training and we sometimes have medical training in basic first aid and CPR or a local towing company may bring in cars to practice extrication.”

If Jahns’ resignation becomes official, Gonzales County Commissioners Court would have to appoint a new ESD commissioner to replace her at a future meeting.

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Both Glass and Haile said they were told during the meeting when the TESRS insurance was first offered, they were told their membership in the organization was not contingent upon meeting the requirements to be certified for insurance.

“For 30 years I was in rescuer, we didn’t have any kind of insurance or life insurance — anything — and we were doing this at our own risk,” Glass said. “When ESD came about,. They said we’re going to get you life insurance and if you get killed, your spouses get $100,000, and if you are maimed for life, they pay a certain amount each month. There was a clause in there that said you have to make a percentage of so many business meetings and so much trainings. I asked what it would mean if you couldn’t meet that, and they said ‘it doesn’t mean you are out of rescue, you just don’t have benefits if you don’t adhere to that.’”

“A lady passed out some paperwork they wanted us to sign saying if you do 25 percent of the meetings and calls, you could get benefits,” Haile recalled. “I told her with my work schedule, it’s gonna be hard for me to make a lot of meetings. The lady said, ‘This is just for the ones that make it to get the benefits. If not, don’t worry about it.’

“I told her that’s fine. I didn’t volunteer for rescues to get benefits or any kind of reward. I volunteer to help my community when I can; that’s why it’s called volunteer work. She said that’s fine. There was other people that heard her say that, one of them being my daughter (Jacey Trammell, who also was terminated) and some others.”

Glass said he questions why some people were allowed to stay on the roster while others were told they were being cut.

“If you go by the rules they just announced, then 13 people should be gone and just seven people should be left,” Glass said. “Some of them still on there don’t meet quota, but are still on there.”
He said the community has now lost access to his equipment through his business, which he would provide at no expense to the rescue team, and questioned whether the team could even perform a water rescue without his boat or help people trapped under equipment without the use of his wreckers.

“The team was blindsided and I think there’s a lot more at work here than people know,” Glass said. “Not just on the rescue side. I feel for community about the resources they’ve lost.”

“Talking to one of the board members, they’re scared of a lawsuit if volunteers do not have enough training, which I completely understand,” Haile said. “A percentage of the people I pull out of the vehicles don’t talk as they have passed away. The other percentage never asked me what qualifications I had; they just want out so they could be rescued.

“The person on the board I talked to, I told him on the other side of the coin — if you can’t get volunteers or people to come rescue these people, you may have a lawsuit. I was told they have insurance for that.”

Glass said he would come back and try to meet any necessary quotas “under a different leadership and administration.”

“I talked to the team and if we had a change in leadership, we would walk back in with open arms,” Glass said. “If it is continued the way it is, we would not.”