Fire Department plans purchase of new ambulance

The Whitefish Fire Department is purchasing a new ambulance to add to its fleet of emergency service vehicles.

City Council earlier this month approved the purchase of a new ambulance at a cost of $248,780 from Apgar Ambulance of Kalispell.

The fire department provides paramedic level transport ambulance services to the city, the Whitefish Fire Service Area and the Olney fire District.

Fire Chief Joe Page said the fire department includes a fleet of three ambulances, and ambulance calls make up about 70% of the emergency calls the fire department responds to during the year.

“We run the newest ambulance as our primary, the next oldest as our secondary, which is typically used for incidents with multiple patients or during simultaneous ambulance calls, and our oldest is used to fill in when one of the newer ambulances is out of service,” he said. “More recently we had our reserve ambulance set up to handle the highly contagious COVID-19 patients.”

The fire department’s capital improvement plan seeks to obtain a new ambulance every three to four years, Page notes, and the oldest ambulance is then sold to offset the cost of the new ambulance. The current fleet consists of ambulances from 2018, 2013 and 2009.

The new ambulance is set to include an AeroClave system to assist with infectious disease decontamination, such as for COVID-19.

The decontamination system had not been anticipated as part of the $200,000 budgeted for a new ambulance. Page said the shortfall will be offset by the proceeds of the sale of its 2009 Ford ambulance, savings in the fire department budget and the receipt of funds from the CARES Act for wages for firefighters.