The St. Charles Fire Department has taken delivery of two new ambulances.
According to firefighter/paramedic John Woods, “One of the things that is nice about these new ambulances as opposed to our older units is the ride. It helps out with patients who might be injured and have to be placed on a long spine board due to a back injury. We also expanded a little bit of our aisle space in the back. It gives us more room for somebody to be on the right side and on the left side of the patient on the stretcher. We now have a refrigeration unit for medications that need to be refrigerated. A safety net has been installed so that medics won’t go flying to the front of the cab or into the shelving. They are great units to work with.”
Captain Scott Freitag said, “The units cost $98,325 each. Very inexpensive for what we got. I think the citizens are going to be really happy with these. They have a much smoother ride. I had one patient tell me that she hadn’t ridden in anything so rough since a model-T. That is how the old units rode. We have a lot more floor space to work in the back because the box affords us six inches more in width than what we had before. It gives the medics with a bad trauma patient or a cardiac arrest patient room to work on both sides of the patient. The air-conditioning unit is going to be a great addition this summer when it gets hot. Over the winter the ambulances sit in a heated place. With the AC unit in the summer we can keep a constant temperature so when we pick up a heat patient the ambulance is not fighting with the temperature outside. It will keep it more comfortable for the patients. The people will notice the new ambulances because they are black over red. They are the only black over red ambulances in town and that fits with the fire department color scheme. What looks like black tape on the side is actually reflective tape. When headlights hit it at night it looks white. We were very happy that we were able to work with the public safety committee to put this together. Mr. Brown, Mr. Gieseke, Mrs. Greer and Mr. Koester as well as Mr. Reese. They were great in helping get this community some very nice ambulances that will be there to protect them.”
The units have continuous flooring in the patient compartment so as to avoid bio-contamination. The auxiliary air conditioning unit keeps the truck cold while the truck is turned off while in quarters during the summer months. The auxiliary AC unit is not common on most ambulances and is not included on any other ambulance units in St. Charles County.
The fire department now has two new ambulances along with the two international chassis ambulances that they use for reserve units.
