LIFE STAR needs rescuing

AN EDITORIAL — What should have been a celebration of more than 20 years of helping to save lives will be more of a plea for help this Saturday, April 4 as Eastern Connecticut faces the loss of local LIFE STAR service.

LIFE STAR helicopter service, which began in 1985, is an integral part of regional Emergency Medical Services.

As most people know, LIFE STAR is called to the scene of serious accidents, often arriving at the crash site minutes after receiving the call.

LIFE STAR also transports patients needing immediate care for trauma, cardiac arrest or stroke to larger medical facilities in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Connecticut has three hospitals designated as Level 1 trauma centers, located in Hartford and New Haven.

LIFE STAR – a “critical care air medical transport service” – is the only critical care helicopter in Connecticut.  A LIFE STAR crew consists of a flight nurse, flight respiratory therapist, pilot, mechanic and communication specialist.

The LIFE STAR service operates two American Eurocopter BK-117,  twin-engine helicopters 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

One aircraft is based on the rooftop helipad at Hartford Hospital. The other is based at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich.

Loss of one helicopter

More than 1,200 patients a year are transported by Hartford Hospital’s two helicopters – 40 percent of them are flights from Backus Hospital.

However, in the budget proposed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell the $1.39 million subsidy the state provides to Hartford Hospital to operate the $7-million-a-year program would be eliminated.

Flights from Backus Hospital would cease because Hartford Hospital would cut back to one helicopter.  According to the LIFE STAR Medical and Program Director Dr. Kenneth J. Robinson, this would mean serving about 40 percent fewer patients, and ceasing most emergency transports in areas outside a certain radius from Hartford.

Currently, flights are made within a 150-mile radius of the two bases in Hartford and Norwich.

State Sen. Edith Prague, at a recent legislative breakfast, urged support for the LIFESTAR program’s funding saying,  “In this budget, we need to make decisions about what’s important, what’s critically important, and what’s a matter of life and death… LIFE STAR is a matter of life and death.”

How to show your support

Eastern Connecticut residents are being asked to show support for this program by attending a Save LIFESTAR event at noon on Saturday April 4 at Backus Hospital. The event will celebrate the helicopter’s past and advocate for its future.

There will be testimonials from patients, speeches from local hospital officials and legislators, “Save LIFE STAR” buttons, cake and a cookout.

Of course, another way to show support is to call Gov. Rell’s office at 1-860-566-4840 or (toll free) 1-800-406-1527 (or TDD 1-860-524-7397).

Or send your message to Governor.Rell@ct.gov, or: Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Office of the Governor, State Capitol, 210 Capitol Ave., Hartford, CT 06106.

Eastern Connecticut struggles with seeking a balance between economic development that will relieve homeowners from some of the tax burden in rural areas and preservation of the farmlands and the open spaces that make this part of the state so attractive.  Nevertheless, these rural areas are perceived as less “needy” than cities like New Haven, Bridgeport or Hartford.

So, it is important for the taxpayers and elected officials in these rural towns to actively protect their resources – and that includes emergency services such as those provided by LIFESTAR.

Posted April 2, 2009

Ban on trapping threatens safety of dams

A beaver and a gnawed tree that will be used to build a beaver dam

State legislators may soon be voting on a controversial measure to ban certain kinds of traps in Connecticut, including traps currently used by wildlife professionals to control burrowing animals in the Connecticut River levee system.

The General Assembly’s Environment Committee recently approved a bill, co-sponsored by State Sen. John Fonfara and Rep. Elizabeth “Betty” Boukus to ban foothold and Conibear traps in the state.

State Sen. John Fonfara

The Connecticut Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators Association, Inc. (CTNWCO Assoc., Inc.) is alarmed at this proposal.

Millions of dollars in repairs to the levee system can be attributed to wildlife problems over the past several years.

State Rep. Elizabeth Boukus and Gov. Jodi Rell. Photo from Web site of Rep. Boukus.

We are deeply concerned about the state’s ability to continue to keep the population levels of these animals in check without these vital tools.

According to Nick Casparino, a Civil Engineer for the town of East Hartford , the town last year alone paid a private contractor $4 million to repair nearly four miles of town-owned dikes that protect it from the Connecticut River .

The town has allocated $25 million to rehabilitating the dike system.

Casparino said that more than $58,000 has been paid to the contractor so far, for controlling and repairing wildlife damage to the dike system, but the project is still ongoing.

Muskrats, beavers and moles

The state lawmakers need to look at the overall picture of this ban on trapping, and look at where these tools can be used effectively to manage wildlife to protect human interests. How will a muskrat or beaver that is burrowing into a levee be caught without these tools being available anymore?

Muskrat

According to Dan Marks, a Civil Engineer and a consultant of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, burrowing animals like muskrats and beavers are the two most common wildlife species to cause structural damage.

Muskrats burrow into the levees and weaken their integrity.

Beavers obstruct spillways, burrow into the levee, and move mud and material to create their own dams.

Mr. Marks says that water level devices are not a good option since they are expensive to install and maintain.

He recalled that last year in June, a muskrat had undermined a repaired water-saturated levee that was holding back the relentless Mississippi River in eastern Missouri .

The town residents had worked for several days to maintain the levee from the rising waters. This only affected about 100 homes, but the levee was protecting an area of about 3,000 acres, and the damage happened when everyone was sleeping.

Muskrats and beaver aren’t the only wildlife causing damage to dikes.

“How can we control moles that are eroding the surface of these levees?” asked Richard Daniotti, owner of Wildlife Control Services of West Hartford. “These lawmakers are supposed to look out for the environment and the people. Yet if they ban the use of traps, they will only cause more poisons to be absorbed into the environment, including our waterways.”

Daniotti also pointed to the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) technical manual for wildlife control professionals to use in managing these animals and said, “FEMA highly recommends these same traps that the state lawmakers are trying to ban.”

DEP Testimony

On March 9, Connecticut DEP Deputy Commissioner Susan Frechette testified in opposition to the trap ban at the environmental lawmakers hearing, citing a detrimental impact on wildlife management.

She testified that if the traps are banned under the proposed legislation, the most effective – and for some species, the only effective tool – will  no longer be available to wildlife control professionals.

Sen. Edward Meyer of Guilford responded to Deputy Commissioner Frechette during the hearing by saying, “I am appalled that the department is condoning the use of these traps.”

Privately-owned dams

Connecticut had 22 deficient dams in 2004, according to a 2005 report on the state’s dams, “Dam Safety in Connecticut,” compiled by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Water Management.

The Connecticut River

There are 468 earthen dams in Connecticut, representing 64 percent of the 723 dams in the state, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers’ 2007 report on National Inventory of Dams.

This report also indicated that 62 percent of the dams are privately owned, and 18 percent are owned by local governments.

Wesley Marsh of the bureau of Water Management said, “It will be hard to tell a private levee owner that they need to remedy a wildlife issue, then have the wildlife department tell them that they cannot trap the animal. Especially if they had a trapper previously managing the beaver population for no charge.”

According to USA Today’s December 22, 2008 article, “Most Levee Repairs Lagging,”  the US Army Corps of Engineers indicated that the worst offenders are Washington and California , where levees with “unacceptable maintenance deficiencies” protect densely populated cities like Seattle and Sacramento.

While Connecticut has recently provided $5 million to improve Hartford ‘s levees, no one knows how this trapping ban will affect the cost of repairing the levees in the future.

One has to wonder if it will even be feasible to perform the repairs without being able to use the proper tools, such as traps, to control the burrowing animals causing the damage.

If the repairs are delayed, the US Army Corps of Engineers could bar access to recovery funds, should there be a catastrophe.

- Tom Logan is Vice President and spokesman for the CTNWCO Association

“The Connecticut Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators Association is a non-profit organization to promote general standards and ethics, as well as foster education, research, and knowledge within the nuisance wildlife control industry.”

Posted March 26, 2009

[Edited for length and continuity]

How to reach the editor…

While we continue to upgrade this site and work out bugs, you can contact the editor at brensullivan@yahoo.com with news items and questions.  Your patience with this transition to a brand new Web site is appreciated.  Also, if you were a registered reader on the old site, you will need to reregister on this new one.  And note that we now have a number of areas where you can share stories from this site (see the “share this” icon at the end of a story). And you will see that we now have news and comment feeds on the upper right corner of the pages.  Thank you for supporting this new publication. — Brenda Sullivan | Editor

Posted March 15, 2009

Always late? Disorganized? Prone to blurting out your thoughts? You may have ADD

Sept. 18 is “National AD/HD Awareness Day”

September 14-20 is AD/HD Awareness Week, a time when we are encouraged to acknowledge Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) as a serious condition that is largely kept under wraps when it comes to adults with AD/HD.

Up until very recently, the school of thought was that children with AD/HD “grow out of” this condition.

In fact, a more accurate explanation is that adults have simply adopted various coping strategies, and have learned to hide their issues, so it appears they no longer have AD/HD.

People with AD/HD – which is now believed to have six different subcategories and isn’t always accompanied by hyperactivity – also tend to be quite bright and are often very creative, and are capable of tremendous productivity (but may suffer from inconsistency).

They usually gravitate toward jobs where they work independently, so that they have more flexibility to work with or around their symptoms. (Ty Pennington, carpenter, designer and host of Extreme Home Makeover, is one of the more famous examples of someone who found work that is a good fit with his AD/HD symptoms.)

Thus, it seems as though as adults these people no longer suffer from AD/HD.

In fact, adults with AD/HD often feel shame and embarrassment, especially should they choose to “come out” at their place of work or to friends and family who weren’t aware of their condition and they are met with ridicule or dismissal – as in, “You’re just making excuses for being lazy/ disorganized/ always late.”

They may have to listen to people make jokes about their problems, such as, “Gee, I forget where I put my car keys all the time, maybe I have ADD!”

Is it a “made up” condition?

People with AD/HD very much struggle with the stigma attached to this “childhood” condition, particularly when there are some psychologists and medical doctors claiming there is no such thing as AD/HD.

And yet, there is plenty of research that links AD/HD to the brain’s inability to produce enough of a neurotransmitter called dopamine.

Dopamine is like the local bus that transports incoming information to the appropriate locations in the brain where it can be synthesized and stored for future retrieval – but if you have AD/HD, the bus has a very unreliable schedule.

Sometimes the bus is on time and everyone gets to their destination. Sometimes the bus shows up late – anywhere from an hour to a week to three months late… suddenly, something a person said to you and the expression on their face as they spoke – and your response (possibly very inappropriate) – “registers.”

And sometimes, the bus never arrives at all. Prompting the angry spouse or employer to complain, “You just don’t listen.”

Jobs, marriages, finances suffer

For someone with a so-called “made up” condition, people with AD/HD face enormous daily struggles with profound consequences.

They may struggle with their relationships – especially as a spouse and parent – if their AD/HD has affected their ability to pick up on emotional cues or to fully connect with another person.

They struggle with jobs where they are surrounded by distractions such as conversations and ringing phones that others are able to mentally push to the background.

It is not uncommon for adults with ADD to work well into the night, after everyone else has gone home to enjoy their families, just because it is the only time when it is quiet enough to focus enough to complete their tasks and meet deadlines.

They may be constantly called on the carpet by their employer for being late, for forgetting assignments, or for focusing on one assignment (the one they find most interesting) while neglecting others that are of more importance or more timely.

They may not be very popular with their co-workers if their form of ADD includes poor impulse control, which can lead to blurting out inappropriate comments (which, to the person making them, seem to make complete sense within the matrix of their thoughts) or to talking “at” people about something they find absolutely fascinating – barely pausing to take a breath – but is boring the listener to tears, or if they over-react to criticism or other emotional triggers.

Finding some answers

If you are someone newly diagnosed with AD/HD, one good source of information is a publication called ADDitude Magazine (also online at www.additudemag.com ) where you can find links to resources for many of the issues with which adults with AD/HD struggle.

There also are many excellent books on the subject of adults with AD/HD, including groundbreaking books by Edward Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction.

Thom Hartmann, who also is a well-respected radio talk show host, has written several useful books, including ADD Success Stories.

Books such as You Mean I’m not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy, ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, and What Does Everyone Else Know that I Don’t Know? (about social skills), are good choices available from www.addwarehouse.com

One source of information about new technology for diagnosing and treating AD/HD is Dr. Daniel G. Amen’s Clinic, which has a Web site at www.amenclinic.com

Other interesting Web sites include www.livingwithadd.com and www.addadhdblog.com

You may wonder how I know so much about this topic. I was diagnosed with ADD at the age of 47, and recently chose to be “out” about it, so that I can help others understand, grow and in some cases, even embrace the gifts that also come with this condition. There are many famous and successful people throughout history (Thomas Edison, dubbed the ADD-poster child) and in the news today (Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps) who are proof that living well and even excelling with AD/HD can be done.

[NOTE: U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) created a bipartisan Senate Resolution designating September 18, 2008 as “National Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Awareness Day.”]

Comments on this or any other story published in Mansfield Today are encouraged. Simply click on the “comment” link at the end of this story. Lengthier comments can be submitted as a Letter to the Editor directed to brensullivan@yahoo.com

For more information: http://mansfield.htnp.com/opinion/editorial/82.html

Welcome to Mansfield Today: an online-only news source

While many readers will know me from The Courant, The Chronicle and The Reminder… let me introduce myself as the editor of Mansfield Today and tell you more about this new publication.

The Mansfield Today edition, an HTNP.com publication, launched on Aug. 1, 2008 and little by little, we are making ourselves known as a unique new service to this community: an online-only news source.

I hope that you take time to browse through the stories that have been posted to date, and feel free to post your comments, or to e-mail me with suggestions ( brensullivan@yahoo.com ) for other stories you might like to read here.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about myself. Actually, many of you are already familiar with my name and face, because I’ve been a reporter in this area for many years. I also lived in Mansfield, on Forest Road, for about 17 years. I currently live in Willimantic.

I first began covering Mansfield news when I worked for The Chronicle, which was from approximately 1991 to 1997.

I left reporting for a while to become the publicist for the Northeast Connecticut Visitors District, otherwise known as the state tourism office for the “Quiet Corner.” I also worked for the Quinebaug-Shetucket Rivers Heritage Corridor, helping to establish this new “national park.”

When the state decided to consolidate the 11 tourism districts, we were combined with the office in Mystic and it became what’s now known as Mystic Country — which, I am sorry to say, gives major attention to the casinos and attractions along the shoreline with only an occasional nod to the northeastern part of the state — usually, the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury and Roseland Cottage in Woodstock.

Nice doggie…

Other forays away from reporting led me to work for the U.S. Census Bureau, which paid me to knock on doors and make people fill out their forms (with many a hair-raising encounter with dogs on the loose).

I also had a short-term contract with Windham Schools to publish a quarterly Spanish/English newsletter called Conexiones/Connections.

And I worked for the University Relations office at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), where I wrote the annual report, edited the monthly newsletter and produced a plethora of press releases.

I also worked for The Courant, out of the Manchester bureau, for about three years. Every time that paper changed hands (twice, while I was there), there would be a wave of layoffs. After one such wave, I was asked to come back — but under contract, which meant they didn’t have to pay me any benefits.

Most recently, I was a staff writer for The Reminder/Broadcaster. I was the Reminder’s first reporter when I was hired part-time about four years ago. Until then, the news consisted of press releases and other reader submissions. I wrote stories for the Manchester edition, and when that proved successful, The Reminder began expanding its editorial staff, and I was brought on full-time to launch the Norwich edition. I also contributed stories to the Broadcaster, which has since been renamed The Reminder.

Adios, paper piles

Now I am involved in this new enterprise, about which I am very excited because like many of you, I no longer have a subscription to a printed newspaper. I read all my publications online (with the exception of my gardening magazines).

As a reader, this means less clutter in my home and not having to call the ciruclation office once a week to ask why my paper wasn’t delivered.

As an enterprise, an online-only publication has none of the costs associated with a printed paper: newsprint (which continues to become more and more expensive), ink, printing presses, bundling machines, plastic wrappers, trucks to transport the papers, local delivery drivers, etc. That means we can offer better advertising rates.

It also means we can be more flexible and timely with the news we publish.

Be a part of it

And you can have direct input on the stories you read via the comment link you will see at the end of each item.

I also invite readers to take part in providing information you’d like to see published here.

It might be Little League scores, upcoming events hosted by your civic group, school or church news, a regular column on gardening or car-shopping or home renovations, music or movie reviews — I am open to suggestions.

If you happen to see me out and about in town, please feel free to say “Hello,” and let me know what you think of this publication.

For more information: http://mansfield.htnp.com/opinion/editorial/welcome_from_mansfield_

today_editor_brenda_sullivan.html