VIDEO: Rehab 5 Helps At Fires

Rehab Five was on the scene of the last week about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, not long after firefighters arrived.

"We are always ready to go," said Roger Baker, who heads up the nonprofit and grew up in .

The Rehab 5 red bus was across the street from the building fire at until the sun came up.

They handed out dry gloves to firefighters whose gloves were wet and hands were frozen.

Baker and an assistant served hot coffee and hot chocolate. They probably helped 55-65 firefighters, some of them multiple times over the course of the long night of firefighting.

They make sure they get to the scene quickly and stay there to lend a hand as long as they are needed.

"We are always on call," he said.

The scene of a fire gets very intense very fast.

In no time at all a street can go from the serenity of night to the boisterous ferocity of an inferno.

Firefighters, EMTs, city officials, press and onlookers arrive within moments. With people that the fire may have displaced emerging as well, chaos is ready to take hold, but Baker has made it his like work to make sense of this chaos.

In 1986, Baker founded Community Service Serving Emergency Rehab to provide fire scene rehabilitation services in his hometown of Swampscott.

With just one truck and three volunteers, they would go to the scene of the fire and allow firefighters, EMTs, and displaced people to rehabilitate while performing their duties, in the form of water, food, and supplying oxygen.

Their services caught on quickly and soon they covered all areas within District 5 of the Beverly Control Area, which constitutes the southern part of Essex County.

Rehab Five vehicles and the group's 20 volunteers often go to fire scenes all over the North Shore in communities such as Peabody, Salem, Lynn, Danvers, Hamilton-Wenham, Marblehead and Swampscott as well as other parts of Essex County and outside of the Beverly Control Area, depending on the scale of the event.

The vehicles are housed in different communities, including at Action Ambulance on Walnut Street and Atlantic Ambulance on Foster Street.

They got to the point where dispatchers would call for them to show up on scenes but, since Community Service Serving Emergency Rehab was too long to say over the radio, dispatchers shortened it to Rehab Five, and the name stuck.

Even though Rehab Five is entering its 25th year of operation, Baker has been doing this a lot longer.

“As far back as I can remember, I’ve been hanging around fire stations,” recalled Baker. “They used to ask me to get them ice cream sundaes so, I would take my bike, but the sundaes in the newspaper basket, and bring them ice cream.”

Baker was there even when times got tougher. “I’d follow them to fires and see them get thirsty so, I’d bring them water,” said Baker. “I guess that’s where it all started.”

Rehab Five now has a fleet of five trucks and roughly 20 volunteers, all of whom are firefighters, dispatchers, or EMTs. They have a good working relationship with all of the fire departments in the towns they cover as well as all the major EMS companies, and are now commonplace at fire scenes.

“People don’t always recognize us,” said Baker. “They see a big red truck and think it’s a municipal vehicle, but its us.”

These tough economic times have hit Rehab Five too, with insurance costs alone raising 50 percent last year, but the non-profit pulls through on donations and staying true to their identity.

“We’re not an EMS company, and I don’t want to become one,” said Baker. “We’re at our best when we work in conjunction with EMTs, whether its allowing them to rehab or letting them use our recourses so they have reserves in their truck if they get called away or have to bring someone to the hospital.”

Despite all this, Baker does have high hopes for the company’s future.

“I don’t see us going outside of District 5 on a regular basis, but I would love to add more trucks and even a base of operation so we can cover the district better. “

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