Hermon Fire welcomes new ambulance

HERMON, Maine (WABI) - There’s a new ambulance serving the greater Bangor area.

After several years of planning, the Hermon Fire Department now has their own ambulance, staffed by Hermon EMS.

This is something they couldn’t have achieved, Chief Cody Sullivan says, without Northern Light Medical Transport.

“The collaboration was that we were ready to start doing EMS, but we knew it was going to take time to order an ambulance. Lead time on an ambulance right now is three years, and there’s a lot that goes into starting up an ambulance service from the ground up. So, our partnership with Northern Light Medical Transport made it possible,.” explains Chief Sullivan. “It bought us the time to do it the right way, and they partnered with us and helped guide us to what the right way to do it was.”

Sullivan says the ambulance costed about $300,000, paid in part by ARPA funds.

The new ambulance allows Hermon Fire to be able to expand the kinds of calls they respond to, as well as improve response times.

According to Andrea McGraw, assistant vice president of EMC at Northern Light Medical Transport, they cover over 100 towns across the state, responding to about 25,000 calls a year.

During a time of immense stress for first responders, McGraw and Chief Sullivan say it is collaborations like these that lead to the best health outcomes.

“It’s really important because we don’t have enough resources in the state of Maine for EMS, so having a new ambulance local, especially one that we work with together, is very helpful,” McGraw describes. “And the other piece of that is that we’re working together still. So, if Hermon is out on an ambulance call already and then a second call comes in, we could go or vice versa.”

For Chief Sullivan, expanding the department’s reach helps relieve other local EMS: “I think everyone knows that right now in Maine, in the greater Bangor area, that EMS is struggling. We’re overtaxed and understaffed, and we were happy to be able to put our truck in service and help lessen the burden on the entire area.”

Chief Sullivan adds Hermon Fire is aiming to have the ambulance staffed 24/7 with EMS.

They only have one more spot to fill to reach that goal.