TV Talk: WQED debuts story of 1st Pittsburgh ambulance service
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Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
WQED-TV producer Annette Banks kept running into the same reaction as she researched the station’s latest half-hour documentary production: “How have I never heard of this?”
Sure, there have been newspaper accounts and an NPR report on the Hill District’s late 1960s-era Freedom House ambulance service in the past decade, but general awareness of the role it played at the dawn of EMT service still lags. Banks hopes to change that with “Freedom House Ambulance — The FIRST Responders” (8 p.m. Thursday, WQED-TV).
Prior to the founding of Freedom House Ambulance in 1967, Banks said, there was basically no ambulance service in the City of Pittsburgh.
“If you had a medical emergency, you could call the police,” said Banks, who joined WQED as a producer/editor about four years ago following her first career as a mechanical engineer. “They would come with something like a paddy wagon and pick you up, throw you in back and race you to the hospital.”
In other parts of the country, it might be firemen or even an undertaker who provided transportation to the hospital.
Calling the police in a medical emergency was a problem for some Hill District residents, who felt tension with the police who may or may not have shown up.
“Oftentimes calls from the Hill District would go unanswered or were delayed,” Banks said. “They really were not responding to them like they should be.”
The key difference compared to today’s emergency services is that before Freedom House there was no medical care on the way to the hospital.
“It was really just transportation,” Banks said.
“Freedom House Ambulance” tells the story of how the service was founded, the people involved in its creation and their motivation for starting the service. Banks also interviewed Hill District residents who remember Freedom House Ambulance and three people who worked for Freedom House Ambulance as the earliest paramedics.
“They share some of the stories of what they did, how they felt, how they dealt with the community and what it meant to them,” Banks said. “And then we get into what happened, why did they shut down? And that’s a very complicated answer.”
In advance of the broadcast premiere, “Freedom House Ambulance” will have a free screening at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Hill District’s Jeron X. Grayson Community Center, 1852 Enoch St., followed by a Q&A panel at 8 p.m. (masks required). Register to attend at freedomhousescreening.eventbrite.com.
After the telecast, the film will be available online at www.wqed.org/freedomhouse and will have an encore airing at 7:30 p.m. Jan 16 on WQED-TV.
“I’ve yet to run into somebody who knows this story, which makes me sad,” Banks said. “It’s a huge first for Pittsburgh and for the country, and we all should know this story, so I’m really very, very excited that I’m going to be able to share it.”