All eight active attendants who operate the volunteer ambulance service in Watson Lake quit Monday morning.

The mass resignations are an attempt to send a message to local government officials.

'A volunteer service cannot be the only thing in place here,' Pauline Lund, one of the eight volunteers who handed in their dispatch radios, said in an interview this morning.

'There's simply too many dispatches, and it's stretching our service terribly thin.'

On Monday morning, Lund and the other seven active volunteers informed the community and the nearby Liard First Nation they would no longer be providing emergency service because attendants are becoming burned out.

Two other volunteers are currently on long-term medical leave.

Several other residents from Watson Lake volunteered to cover the emergency services while help from the Yukon government arrived in town today to pick up the slack.

Rural emergency services manager Barry Kidd will work as a responder, and arrangements have been made for a driver to be made available as well.

Because it's a volunteer service and the members do not receive any financial compensation, many of the attendants have part-time jobs to make a livelihood.

That livelihood is threatened when emergency dispatches are put out.

'We need to have two people responding immediately when we receive a call, and sometimes there's nobody who can answer it,' Lund said.

'Then it is left to those who are semi-retired to respond, and this is when people start get burnt-out.'

Lund said providing service wasn't an issue a few years ago when they only received 100 to 200 calls a year, but that number has dramatically spiralled to more than 400 calls a year. It's a workload which they believe should be handled by full-time paid ambulance crews.

Watson Lake Mayor Nancy Moore attributes the mounting volume to the increased traffic on the Alaska Highway, and said the number of calls is higher than other communities of similar populations.

After the volunteers quit, Lund said, they received a call from the volunteer crew in Dawson City which gave the Watson Lake crew their full support.

'They're having the same problem there as we're having here,' Lund said.

'They only have three active attendants currently. We can't all volunteer constantly; we have other lives to live.'

Moore also gave her support to the Watson Lake crew in receiving compensation for their work.

'They're all really passionate about what they do, and they have a tremendous committment to the community,' she said.

'We were very reluctant to give up our radios,' Lund said. 'Some people thought we should just keep going until nobody answers, but obviously that's no good either.'

Lund said the volunteers are not looking for year-round coverage, but for assistance from April to September, when they're busiest.

'We could even have coverage in a shorter period than that if need be, but we volunteer all year long. We should be able to go camping for a couple weeks,' she said.

'Everyone we have is very devoted, and we get frightened that we can't respond to an emergency. Feeling guilty is not what a volunteer service is all about.'

Two of the attendants are also hoping to leave Watson Lake at the end of the summer to receive further training, which would stretch the service thinner still.

A meeting is currently scheduled between the volunteers and Kidd for Wednesday evening to discuss the issue.

However, Lund said many of the volunteers aren't very optimistic about the gathering since they'll be expressing the same concerns as in the past.

Lund said several volunteers sent letters to the Yukon government last January voicing their concerns and never received a response.

'We also approached city council in April and they said they would help us in any way they could, and yet we didn't hear back from them until yesterday,' Lund said.

Moore said a meeting with Premier Dennis Fentie took place later that same week when issues pertaining to the ambulance service were discussed, but Lund said the volunteers were never made aware of the meeting's outcome. The premier represents the Watson Lake electoral riding.

Government spokesperson Dennis Senger said this morning no further arrangements have been made to send additional attendants to Watson Lake to provide coverage.

'Our goal right now is for Barry to meet with the volunteers, go over their concerns, and then see where they go from there,' Senger said.