Somerton gets $570K federal grant to beef up ambulance service
SOMERTON — If two emergencies occur in Somerton at the same time, the Somerton Cocopah Fire Department can send an ambulance to only one.
The fire department depends on another fire department in the area to provide an ambulance for the second.
But the arrival time of the second ambulance is slower because it’s traveling from farther away.
The problem is not having enough ambulances. SCFD doesn’t have the personnel to staff two of its ambulances at the same time.
That situation changes with a federal grant the department just received.
The Federal Emergency Management Administration has awarded the fire department a $573,550 grant through the agency’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program, SCFD Chief Paul De Anda said.
That money, coupled with a match of $356,528 from the City of Somerton, will allow the department to pay the salaries of three additional emergency medical technicians and three certified paramedics over a three-year period.
“This is going to help
us operate a second of the two ambulances we have as first-responders,” De Anda said. “Currently we can respond to a call with the first ambulance. But if in that moment another emergency comes up that requires ambulance service, we have to call other departments to help us, because we don’t have enough personnel.”
The catch is that the FEMA grant is not renewable after it expires in three years. That means the city will then have to assume the full cost of the additional people, or the fire department will have to find another funding source to share the expense.
Until now, if SCFD needed help taking care of simultaneous auto accidents or other emergencies, it called on the San Luis, City of Yuma and Rural/Metro fire departments to provide the second ambulance.
But if the department has to depend on another agency in another locale, the response time inevitably is delayed by 15 minutes or more by travel time, De Anda said.
“We can guarantee a response time of four to six minutes to the first call, because we are here and we can take care of it, but if another emergency comes up at the same time and requires an ambulance, that ambulance has to come from farther away, and that’s why it increases the response time.”
In 2017, said De Anda, the SCFD needed help from an outside ambulance on 113 occasions, either because simultaneous emergencies occurred or because two or more ambulances were needed to transfer multiple patients of a single emergency.
From Jan. 1 through July of this year, it called for ambulances from other departments in 73 instances.
De Angda said the SCFD is already recruiting applicants to fill the six new slots, with the goal of having the personnel in place before the end of the year.