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By Michele Smith
The Times 

Jay Penner Wants 100% "Yes" Votes for August EMS levy

Penner shares His story of EMS response to injury that led to paralysis

 

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Jay Penner takes a ride in his track wheelchair at his family's farm north of Waitsburg.

WAITSBURG-When the ballots are counted in August for the proposed emergency medical services levy, Jay Penner wants to see one-hundred percent of voters in favor of it.

Penner and his wife, Jackie, farm wheat, dried peas and a small chickpea called Billy Beans in Columbia County, north of Waitsburg.

On October 3, 2016, EMS personnel from Fire Districts 2 and 3 responded to an accident on their farm that has placed Penner in a wheelchair for life.

Penner said that on that morning, he went out to a tractor, which was parked in a field along Balch Road, to remove a GPS antenna.

"I crawled up the back of that tractor, and I had the antennae in my left hand and started down and slipped some place. I don't know where I slipped, yet," he said. "And so I started grabbing for anything I could grab for. It was only about six feet off the ground, but for some reason I got turned wrong and lit on my head.

"And my feet are up in the air, and my body rolled to the ground with my shoulders coming first, then my hip, and then my legs, and then my boots. And when my boots hit the ground I knew I was screwed," said Penner.

Penner said he had had back surgery the year before and was worried about possible damage to that.

"I laid there a little bit to try to figure out what had gone wrong and what I was going to do next. I couldn't get to the radio," he said.

"I had my cell phone with me and it was charged up, and I'm not a person to make that the first thing at night - to charge my cell phone. And we don't have cell phone coverage out here, anyway, unless you are up on a hill," said Penner. "Well, I had a phone. I had it charged. And lo and behold I was up on a hill to where I could get reception."

He said he called Jackie and told her he just fell off the tractor and he thought he had broken his back. Then they lost phone contact.

Jackie Penner said she called the couple's son-in-law, Kirk Fortner, who was on the other side of the farm, and between the two of them they found him, and used a radio to dial 911.

"We sent one of the hired people out to flag down the ambulance," she said.

Jackie said it was 53 degrees outside, and cold and windy, so EMS personnel worked to get Jay stabilized, and on a backboard for transport by air to Providence St. Mary's Hospital in Walla Walla.

"We weren't sure if the helicopter could land because of the wind. But that guy was a hot dog, and he set that thing about 200 ft. from us," she said about the Life Flight pilot who transferred Jay Penner to Walla Walla.

That same day, Penner was transferred from Walla Walla to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, where he was treated surgically for fractures in his thoracic spine, and where he was diagnosed a complete paraplegic, meaning no sensation from mid chest down.

Penner said he spent the next 11 months undergoing extensive rehabilitation, and treatment for some worrisome pressure sores, before being discharged back home on September 7, 2017.

He said he now feels pretty good and is starting to get out and about.

"I'm in the process, right now, of building a wheelchair lift for my pickup, so I can put my chair in the pickup after it sets me in the pickup. I have controls already in the pickup and I drive where I want to. It's just I can't get in and out of it right now," he said.

Penner said he contacted a company in Indiana to buy a wheelchair lift, but the cost to the Penners would be around $50,000.

"I'll just build it myself. I'll show those people back in Indiana how things get done in farm country," said Penner, who has been in the manufacturing business as well as the farming business.

The Penners reflected on the criticality of having fully operational EMS services.

"I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't had an ambulance," said Jackie Penner. "Without ambulance services many of us out here in the country would lose a life, because the timing is so important."

"I had never been in an ambulance before," said Penner. "I didn't think I'd ever use an ambulance. That was the last thing on my mind, you know. They got me stabilized and off that hill.

"It's going to take a levy to get some cash into this ambulance service, if we're going to continue to keep it," he continued "In fact, we need 100% yes votes and 0% no votes."

A supermajority of 60% of yes votes is required to pass the permanent levy. If passed, the levy will raise a projected amount of $485,794 in 2019 for the three Columbia County Fire Districts and for the Town of Starbuck, according to District 3 Chief Jeromy Phinney.

 

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