HOULTON – With 397 snowmobile accidents recorded last season in Maine – 141 of them involving personal injury – a great need exists to get medical treatment to injured people quickly and safely.

Thanks to community donations and Yankee thrift, that service became a reality last week when Houlton’s new off-road winter rescue unit was put into service.

Equipped with a snowmobile and a rescue toboggan that are carried in an enclosed trailer, the unit can be towed by the Houlton Fire Department rescue truck to any site in the area where it is needed.

“This is just another piece of equipment that the hobbies of the public have necessitated us to have,” said Milton Cone, the town’s fire chief and ambulance director.

“Our rescue capabilities have to adapt to the hobbies of the individual,” he continued. “That’s why we have a boat and motor here, too.”

In 1998, with the help of the Houlton Regional Health Services Foundation and the Meduxnekeag Ramblers Snowmobile Club in Littleton, the town acquired a rescue toboggan.

The partially enclosed tote sled is designed to safely transport people who have been injured in the woods or on snowmobile trails.

Earlier this year, the departments obtained a 1996 Ski-Doo snowmobile with 600 miles on it to pull the toboggan, as part of an equipment swap with a local police officer.

The only thing that was needed was a trailer to pull the apparatus.

“We had all these things,” said Cone on Tuesday. “The question was, how do we transport them to the scene?

“We determined that a regular snowmobile trailer wouldn’t suit our purpose because we wouldn’t be able to keep any of the rescue equipment clean and dry,” he said. “Also, the toboggan would be wet for the patient.”

The problem was solved with a grant from the Health Services Foundation – a nonprofit charitable organization that supports health care projects in the region – which covered the $3,970 cost of a fully enclosed trailer.

Purchased from C & C Distributors Inc. of China, the trailer has drive-though capability and is large enough to allow rescue personnel to stand nearly upright inside.

On Tuesday, Elizabeth Dulin, the foundation’s administrator, got her first look at the unit that the agency funded.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, as Cone explained the different features of the trailer and the equipment it carries. “It’s so much more than I expected.

“I hope it never has to be used, but for people who use recreational vehicles, they want to be sure that if they get hurt that help is available,” she said.

Without the off-road unit, Cone said winter rescues were iffy at best. The rescue toboggan had to be lifted into a volunteer firefighter’s pickup truck to be transported.

Once at the scene, rescuers had to rely on untrained members of the public to bring emergency medical technicians to an accident scene and had to use makeshift arrangements to get people back to a waiting ambulance, sometimes a distance of several miles.

Sometimes, there were no snowmobiles equipped to pull the toboggan and time was wasted. Island Falls, Patten and Mars Hill have rescue toboggans.

With winter rescue needs taken care of, the fire and ambulance departments are hoping to expand the capabilities to the off-road rescue unit to cover all-terrain vehicle accidents as well.

That will require purchasing a four-wheel-drive ATV and modifying the rescue toboggan to be used in conditions other than snow.

“It would be a crime if we didn’t look at that,” Cone said, noting the ever-increasing use of ATVs.

The departments have applied to the Health Services Foundation for funding for a conversion kit to make the rescue toboggan suitable for ATV rescues.

“We are a popular, multiseasonal recreational state,” Dulin said. “It only makes sense to equip the [toboggan] with the ability to make rescues all year long, not just during snow season.”