Growing up with both her parents serving as EMTs and firefighters throughout her childhood, Jerauld County’s new Ambulance Director, Deb Fastnacht, says that working as an emergency responder is engrained in her DNA.
“Dad was a State Fire Marshall and taught in EMS on both the state and national level. Dad’s philosophy was train, train, train,” she explained. “It was normal life. We would go to training with them and would even be a part of it acting as the victim in training scenarios.”
Originally from Plankinton, Fastnacht has lived in Jerauld County over 25 years. She started on an EMS crew at age 19 while attending nursing school, working in health care as a nurse for 15 years.
“After my dad died in 2003, I stepped away from nursing but was heavily involved in Red Cross,” she said. “I started out as disaster volunteer instructor around the time Hurricane Katrina hit. At the time, I had young children so I did not deploy but stepped up as a first aid, AED and CPR instructor for the volunteers that went to help during the disaster.”
In addition to working as a Red Cross instructor, she also did fundraising for the Red Cross out of Huron.
Enthusiastic about her new position, Fastnacht acknowledges that currently the ambulance service has a limited full-time active crew.
“I’m seeking to grow that and in January 2023 there will be another EMT class,” she said, adding that if anyone is interested they may contact her. “Dick and Ellen (Powell) have built a relationship with this community and I don’t want to undo the things they did. I want to expand on them.”
Fastnacht looks forward to hosting community classes, asking the question, “We have six AEDS in town — does everyone in the community know where they are and how to use them?”
Being a rural community, the coverage area for the ambulance service is vast. Fastnacht wants to spearhead a program to get folks living in the country trained and equipped to be a first responder to the scene in their area while the ambulance is en route.
"If they get there to start care in an emergency situation, it could save someone’s life.”
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