I was at the Lawrence Regional Airport last month for a meeting when the door flew open and someone asked if any of us knew CPR. A man had collapsed by his airplane and wasn’t breathing.

We ran outside into the heat. Somebody had 911 on speakerphone, and a voice was coming out of that phone telling people how to do chest compressions. Someone else was running over with the defibrillator. The team at Hetrick Air Services did everything right and they did it fast, and I believe they saved this man’s life.

Lawrence police, fire, and medical crews got there as fast as anyone could have asked and did everything they could. I’m grateful to every one of them, and I want to say that up front. Here’s what I can’t shake. That man had a chance because some amazing people happened to be standing a few feet away when he stopped breathing. Not everyone on the north side of the river gets that. North Lawrence doesn’t have its own fire and medical station. It never has, and that’s a serious problem.

Think about what a minute is worth. When someone stops breathing, the odds of surviving drop about 7% to 10% every minute that goes by without CPR and a defibrillator. Our fire department shoots for four minutes because it’s the time they have to save someone. And then there’s the river. You can’t get in or out of North Lawrence without crossing it, and there’s really only one option. On a good day that’s a few minutes. But that’s not always possible. A stopped train, a wreck on the bridge, construction, high water. Any one of them stretches those minutes and there’s no way around it.

So who’s on the wrong side of that water when the clock starts? Roughly 3,200 residents and businesses, plus everyone working our industrial areas and the airport. It doesn’t have to be a man by his airplane, either. It could be a kid who goes down on his bike on Locust Street, or somebody’s grandmother alone off North Second while a train sits across the only road out. And if Tuesday had been an airplane crash, I don’t believe there would have been much chance for anyone.

None of this is news to people who live there. I serve on the North Lawrence Corridor Study Task Force, and when the city asked residents what they wanted, better access for emergency responders was very high on the list. North Lawrence has always been the part of town that waits longer and gets less.

Look, I live on the west side of Lawrence, and I know the city is stretched thin. I’m not pretending this is free. But plans come before money, and right now North Lawrence isn’t in the plan. They’re writing that corridor study right now, and it’s going to shape what this city does north of the river for decades. If you think a fire and medical station belongs in that plan, and I think the airport is the place for it, then say so. Email the City Commission. Come to a corridor study meeting. That’s what actually carries weight in that room.

Somebody is going to go down on the north side of the river again. The only question that will matter is how far away help was sitting, and whether we did anything while we had the chance.

Kerry Gooch serves on the Lawrence Airport Advisory Board and the North Lawrence Corridor Study Task Force.