The EMS will get a new Horton ambulance this year.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE "It’s a lot of driving," Rob Drako said Wednesday.
Mr. Drako, the operations coordinator for the township Emergency Medical Service, was talking about the EMS’s response statistics for 2004.
The EMS, which operates 10 ambulances out of two stations located on Monmouth Road and at the Township Municipal Complex on Perrineville Road responded to 6,930 emergency calls within the township’s 44 square miles last year, according to the service’s 2004 annual report.
The EMS which is divided into a 20-person, full-time paid unit (the Municipal Ambulance Service) and a volunteer First Aid squad transported 5,369 of those callers to a half-dozen hospitals located in towns as dispersed as Princeton, Old Bridge, New Brunswick, Hamilton and Freehold.
And all that driving takes its toll on the EMS’s fleet of ambulances, Mr. Drako said (only two of the ambulances have fewer than 100,000 miles on them).
In response to the increase in driving necessitated by the township’s recent growth, Township Business Administrator Wayne Hamilton instituted a policy in 2003 of buying one new replacement ambulance each year and two new ambulances every other year for the EMS, Mr. Drako said.
This year, the service will get one brand-new, $153,353 Horton ambulance from VCI Emergency Vehicles in South Jersey to replace one of its older ones, Mr. Drako said. The bid for the vehicle’s construction was approved by the Township Council May 2 and Mr. Drako said the EMS should have the rig in service by this fall.
"It’s sort of a test model, a little different from what we’ve bought in the past," he said. "Nothing radical we’ve gone from a Ford chassis to a GM it’s just different enough that we’ll want to work the bugs out, see if it rides too high, too bumpy, if it’s too long, whatever."
Mr. Drako said the timeline for the purchase of next year’s ambulances would be dependent on how well the new rig works out, but that the purchases would have to be made in order to help the EMS keep up with the expansion of the township.
Judy Olbrys, director of EMS, said that in addition a new fire station under construction on Centre Street, the township has plans in the works for another station near the intersection of Applegarth and Cranbury-Half Acre roads. Both stations will have to be staffed with two ambulances and two-person crews to cover three shifts, she said.
"And if this thing on Route 33 ever happens," she said, referring to a proposed minor league ball park, "they’re talking about another station down there, as well."
All-in-all, it’s a far cry from the original, all-volunteer first aid squad Ms. Olbrys helped to established back in 1970 much like the township itself, she said.
"Back then, it was all rabbits and deer out here and a few farmers," she said. "Now, we get things all the time that we used to only read about."

