New Concord Fire Dept. Has New Ambulance

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — After a year-and-a-half long process, the New Concord Fire Department received a new ambulance today, which will help them better serve the community.

The process included specification of the vehicle, inspections, the build process, and even cancellation by Ford of the initial 2016 model that the NCFD was set to receive. In the end, Fire Chief Brent Gates, who spoke of his desire to support Ohio business, received a 2017 model built by Braun Ambulances in Van Wert. The new ambulance will help support Chief Gates’ medical staff which he said makes nearly four EMS calls per day.

“We’re actually getting a new ambulance, a new medic. We run three ambulances, we’re a combination fire department with three guys on duty 24/7. I’m a 40-hour guy so we’ve got part-time and paid on-call; we’ve still got volunteers too,” said Chief Gates.

The new ambulance will not only boost morale among the staff, but the state-of-the-art equipment will enhance performance and make the medic’s more effective when performing CPR and other medical tasks.

“Anytime you get a new vehicle for your staff it helps with morale, makes everybody happy. And we bought another Lifepak 15 to make sure all our heart monitors are 15’s. And we also bought a device called a Lucas 2 which will allow the medics in the back, the machine does the CPR for you,” he added.

Chief Gates says that his department does approximately 1,300 runs per year, 1,000 of which are EMS calls.