St. Joseph, Homer, Sidney, Ogden, and Royal fire departments announce ambulance service through St. Joseph-Stanton Fire Protection Department
By Brett McMahon
There’s a new addition coming to the St. Joseph-Stanton Fire Protection Department and it should bring its mission to serve and protect to an even higher level of excellence.
A new ambulance will be housed at the SJSFPD base starting November 6 with 24-hour service capability. A non-transport paramedic fly car will also be housed in the Homer Fire Department.
The ambulance, through a partnership with Carle Arrow Ambulance, will serve not only the St. Joseph community but also Homer, Sidney, Ogden, and Royal and should cut response time by 15 minutes.
Nearly a year ago, fire chief Josh Reese started looking at how to improve the response time of the department, which had been using ambulance service from the Champaign and Urbana area. Their time to reach St. Joe was around 15-17 minutes and an additional 10 minutes to reach Homer. But, he ran into an issue when he learned the call volume simply wasn’t high enough within the village to warrant an ambulance of their own. Naturally, since St. Joe works with the surrounding communities of Homer, Sidney, and Ogden-Royal, the idea of partnering with them was a perfect solution for everyone and that collaboration generated the call volume to warrant an ambulance.
To help accommodate the team of Emergency Medical Technicians, the SJSFPD needed to provide sleeping quarters, which they did in their upstairs area using money from their yearly budget. The upper level of their building was already set up for the potential to accommodate with sleeping quarters, but the department didn’t expect to make the upgrades so soon. EMT’s will now be on call 24-hours a day, seven days a week and the ambulance will now be able to reach residents from the village in just a couple minutes and can reach Homer’s residents in about 10 minutes, compared to 25-minute response when it came from Champaign.
One of the greatest benefits of the upgrade, according to Chief Reese, is that it will not cost taxpayers any money. “We’re happy we can add this service without raising people’s taxes,” he says. He added that while the EMT’s already on staff give excellent care, this will help ensure a faster transfer to the hospital, which can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
Prior to the new service, the department took about 425 calls a year with around 250 of those being for medical emergencies. With the new ambulance, Chief Reese expects that number will likely increase to around 600 calls a year. In addition to the natural partnerships with nearby communities, teaming with Carle Arrow Ambulance was an easy decision, since the department has partnered with them for nearly 30 years and several residents of St. Joseph are members of that department as well.
