$10,000 presented at ceremony

A $10,000 memorial gift in honor of the late Heidy Switzer was announced during Libby Volunteer Ambulance’s ribbon cutting ceremony for its new barn Tuesday.

Switzer’s husband, Mike, told guests that his wife left the money in her will, in addition to $10,000 for St. John’s Lutheran Hospital.

Switzer spoke about the quick response by ambulance crews, who saved Heidy’s life after a Christmas Day horse-riding accident. She lived another four years before dying from a cancerous tumor.

“She has also given us a thousand dollars a year since her accident four years ago,” said LVA Secretary Penny Kyes.

More than 300 people turned out to tour the new facility.

“People were coming in all the doors from all sides,” Kyes. “We finally had to shut all the doors except a couple to keep track of everyone.”

It took about a year to complete the building, with much help from local contractor Jim Regh, who donated all of his time.

“(Regh) worked eight hours a day, six days a week for almost a year,” said Kyes. “It was a huge donation.”

The idea for the new barn began in 1999 and has slowly come to fruition through community effort and donations.

“We bought the property in 2001 with the vision of a new building,” said Kyes.

The 37-year-old former ambulance barn was four times smaller and probably would not have survived last year’s snow.

The designer of the facility was Shellie Larimer, who, after being laid off from Stimson mill, studied architectural design at ITT Tech in Spokane.

Larimer and her classmates took on the barn as a project.

“That was a huge savings. It was one thing after another that saved us so many dollars,” said Kyes, noting the community gave hours and services totaling $300,000 to $400,000.

Among the donors, Frontier Communications ran cables at no charge, while Moore Oil donated man hours and propane lines.

LVA has 36 volunteers and one full-time paid employee. The city and county do not pay wages or for services.

The ambulance receives 90 percent of its funding from its fees, with only 10 percent paid by tax levies.

“Our funding comes from us going out on calls,” said Kyes. “We bill our patients’ insurance and that’s how we earn the income. The only thing the county does is pay for our workmens’ compensation out of the tax levy, as well as Troy’s and Eureka’s.”

“This is being paid for from our services, not from tax dollars,” Kyes continued, noting taxpayers may have helped purchase a few of their six ambulances.

Kyes said she has heard grumblings that the building was too big and too expensive.

“It is already full of our equipment, and it was built for the future,” she said. “It will be useful 50 years from now without needing an immediate addition or improvements.

It is also built high enough to be out of range of flooding.

“We would like this place to become a community center, a meeting place,” said Kyes.

The meeting room, which has a kitchen and restrooms, can be rented for $25 a day.

“We think it will attract new volunteers and it already has,” said Kyes, who noted their recent graduated class of EMTs totaled 10.

“When you ask so much of people — 48 hours a month — it offers them an additional perk to have a nice place to stay and work out.”