Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
More than three months after Robert Wood Johnson officially took over EMS services in Hillsborough, township officials announced the intention on creating a volunteer service to run in tandem with the regional hospital’s offerings.
During the Sept. 26 township committee meeting, Committeeman Frank DelCore revealed that plans were in the works to establish a new volunteer EMS organization.
“Part of the plan was to ensure that we could reinstitute a volunteer EMS organization. That had kind of fallen off under the last arrangement that we had for EMS,” he said.
According to DelCore, “several township residents” have come forward looking to contribute to such an organization, prompting Business Administrator Anthony Ferrera and Office of Emergency Management Director John Sheridan to begin the process of starting the new volunteer outfit.
“We hope to begin taking new volunteers for that organization in the near future,” DelCore said. “There’s nothing really in terms of structure that has been put in place yet, but we’re pleased that we’ve got some people who have been involved with and understand EMS organizations wanting to work with us on that reestablishment.”
The question of whether or not there would be a volunteer organization in the township at all came up when the committee voted in favor of awarding a five-year contract for EMS services to Robert Wood Johnson earlier this year.
Up until the committee’s decision in March, residents and the governing body sparred over the decision to end a nearly three decade agreement with the paid career staff of Hillsborough EMS.
Hillsborough EMS originally started as a volunteer operation in 1955, though it eventually became a paid squad in 1988 o cover shifts that the volunteers couldn’t. At the time of the agreement’s end, volunteers covered the township’s night shift from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., while the career staff operated during the day.
According to the contract with RWJ, the hospital committed to supplying two ambulances to the township on a 24-hour basis – one on the eastern boundary and one on the western boundary. Over the course of the day, those two vehicles would be constantly on the move to optimize response times.
Additionally, the hospital cited the chance for approximately “13 ambulances available within Somerset and Middlesex counties” as additional resources in the event of an emergency.
Though the bid from RWJ covers basic life support and standby services for community events, other services like extrication and water rescue will be handled by the township’s fire companies.
