TONAWANDA, N.Y. — The Town of Tonawanda now has their very own ambulance service.
Town of Tonawanda Supervisor Joseph H. Emminger shared details on Thursday regarding the new service for the community.
The new ambulance service will supplement the town's paramedic service, which responded to 8,296 calls in 2023. More than 5,000 of those calls required an ambulance, according to the towns press release.
The town's paramedic service has been in operation in the Town of Tonawanda since August, 11 1975.
“This new ambulance service that not only will generate additional revenue for the town, thereby taking some of the tax burden off of the property owners, but it will also provide better service to our residents and business owners,” Supervisor Emminger said in a release. “The genesis of the initiative came last year when I met with Paramedic Supervisor Matt DeRose and Police Chief James Stauffiger, who came to me with a serious problem they were seeing: the delay in time it was taking for ambulances to arrive to transport our residents to local hospitals.”
The two new ambulances will operate 24-hours a day. A third ambulance will operate 12-hours a day, and the fourth will be a backup.
The town says they consulted with a firm with that has expertise in emergency services and had them conduct a study to see if having its own ambulance service made sense for the town; both for service and financially. The study recommended the town launch a fleet of four ambulances and hire 20 EMTs. It also called for the hiring of two additional full-time pracademics to ad to the 16 full-time and seven part-time paramedics.
NYS Assemblyman William Conrad office says they will commit $250,000 towards the ambulance purchases.
The town hopes that two of the ambulances will be on the road by February 2025.
“This is a momentous announcement,” Assemblyman Conrad said. “Momentous for the town, its paramedic unit, and most especially for the residents of Tonawanda who will continue to receive skilled, immediate-response emergency care at the hands of our world-class EMS professionals.”
“I have steadfastly envisioned making the Town of Tonawanda Police Department (TTPD) the premier public safety agency,” Chief Stauffiger said. “The paramedic unit is part of that vision. Expanding the town's emergency medical services with highly trained EMTs and ambulances will be a tremendous addition to the town's exceptional public safety services and a significant benefit to our community. I am proud to lead TTPD into the future with this endeavor, and I hope the town's citizens will share in this pride and be motivated by the positive impact we will have on our community.”
“The Town of Tonawanda Paramedics have been a cornerstone of public safety in the Ken-Ton Community for the past 50 years,” said Paramedic Supervisor MaThew DeRose. “Providing the highest quality emergency medical services to the ciDzens of the Town of Tonawanda and Village of Kenmore has been the mission since day one. Expanding the town’s emergency medical services to include EMT’s and ambulances is an important and needed progression to continue the mission of providing the highest quality emergency medical services. “
Two town paramedics are state EMT instructors, and two paramedics are being trained as lab instructors which will allow the town to run its own EMT class and build an in-house system. There will still be times in the town when mutual aid partners will be needed to respond to emergency calls for an ambulance.
See the full press release attached below.
