After a six-month absence, the ambulance has returned to Manor Station in Penacook.
In March, the unit was sent to Central Station when call volumes increased – a move that drew complaints from residents in the northern part of the city. Now, with the addition of a fourth ambulance in Concord and the hiring of new emergency personnel, the station has returned to full strength.
“What we found was that because of the call volume and how busy the trucks were, we were not meeting our goals in an increasing number of areas in the city,” said interim Concord Fire Chief John Chisholm.
What should have been a nine-minute response time was, at times, more than 12 minutes to parts of the city, he said. As part of the city budget process, councilors approved a fourth ambulance team in the city. Chisholm said the addition would help the city meet industry standards, which call for a basic life-support crew on scene within five minutes and an advanced life support team within nine minutes.
“Most of our calls are non-life-threatening, but it could have potentially impacted the survivability, and that’s what we looked at – we wanted to work on a worst-case scenario,” Chisholm said.
Residents in the northern part of the city and the village of Penacook, which Manor Station services, were upset with the decision to relocate the ambulance.
“Penacook is one of the more remote sections of the city, and it takes us longer to get there, which is why there was a big concern,” Chisholm said. “But I don’t think a lot of people realized that we did staff that engine with a paramedic with advanced life support training to try to soften the effects that happened there.”
After a celebration was held last Saturday, Chisholm said he has received thanks from residents.
“Now we have four fully staffed ambulances, and that will hopefully reduce the amount of times that we have to rely on our mutual aid response agencies,” Chisholm said.
The decision to add a fourth ambulance to the Fire Department was a costly one. In addition to purchasing the vehicle, a new emergency crew needed to be hired and trained.
As part of the city’s $123.6 million budget, city taxes rate rose 4.8%, and one-third of that increase went to the fire department for the ambulance and crew, purchasing a new tower truck, paying for overtime costs and upgrading the certifications of 14 emergency medical technicians to Advanced EMTs.
The money spent was the largest increase in the city’s emergency services in a generation, wrote City Manager Tom Aspell in a letter to the council in May.
“We had made a request for those additional personnel and, as soon as that budget was approved, we started working through the recruitment process,” Chisholm said. “Last week, four recruits that were hired to help us with this finished their training.”
Each was placed with a battalion, increasing the number of staffing from 20 to 21 per shift.
“I think the addition of this ambulance and fire personnel will allow us to meet the immediate call demand that we are seeing,” Chisholm said. “But looking forward, time will tell if it will be sufficient and how long it’s going to allow us to maintain.”