For the first time in 20 years, the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services has added an ambulance to its fleet.

The additional ambulance was needed for Fayetteville in large part due to the increased call volume, said Deputy Chief Allen McCullough. The department has protocols that indicate a new ambulance is needed whenever any one ambulance runs more than 2,000 calls a year. The county’s call volume grew roughly 10 percent from 2004 to 2005, officials said.

Another factor in the need for the ambulance is to keep response times down, as the goal is to arrive in under five minutes, McCullough said. The increasing traffic in Fayetteville is becoming a factor too, McCullough said.

“It certainly can be difficult to negotiate,” McCullough said.

Motorists should pull off to the right to make room when emergency vehicles approach, officials said.

The additional ambulance also comes in handy for scenes such as the one on McDonough Road last week: a three-vehicle crash with seven patients who needed to be evaluated.

The new ambulance is stationed in downtown Fayetteville, but its presence will benefit those in outlying areas of the county, too. In the past, when the Fayetteville station’s ambulance was out on a call and another call came in, an ambulance would be pulled in from another station, McCullough explained.

Now that a second ambulance is available in Fayetteville, coverage in other areas doesn’t have to be modified, McCullough said.

The ambulance itself cost $125,000 and it has an additional $80,000 in life-saving equipment and medical supplies, Bartlett said.

In addition to the two ambulances, the downtown Fayetteville station also has a two-man team called a manpower squad, which is designed to respond to critical situations anywhere in the county, McCullough said.

The county now has five full-time ambulances and an extra one that’s available as needed. Though the main role of the ambulance is the transporting of patients, each one has fire gear so a crew can rescue anyone inside a burning building if they’re the first on scene, for example.

Under the county’s EMS system, fire engines and all apparatus have life-saving equipment that can immediately treat victims in a wide range of scenarios, so the most important thing is getting the first unit along with paramedics and EMTs on the scene, McCullough said.

With a higher pace of calls this year, projections are that the department will handle 500 more calls this year than last. Still, the department is not likely to need another ambulance in the next five to seven years, McCullough said.

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