Correction, 12:45 p.m. March 26: Due to editing errors, this story's original headline incorrectly stated that the Assembly of Governments planned to increase funding for the county's EMS department. The assembly discussed the option, but made no decision. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
If you called an ambulance in Orange County last year, it probably didn’t show up for about 17 minutes.
The county Emergency Medical Services department’s goal is a 12-minute response time, but inadequate resources and a lack of personnel have made providing emergency assistance to the town increasingly difficult.
Officials indicated they would devote the money to finance the struggling EMS at Thusday’s Assembly of Governments meeting, during which elected officials representing Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and Orange County convened.
EMS Director Frank Montes de Oca said his department will need $1.4 million from the county next fiscal year to add 29 members to his personnel, which processes more than 1,000 phone transactions a day.
EMS also can’t meet its goal for processing 911 calls.
“Typically, that should be about 90 seconds. We’re about 225 seconds,” he said. “We don’t have the telecommunicators for that.”
Montes de Oca also requested $225,000 for a new ambulance to add to the four full-time ones EMS has now. On 220 occasions last year, someone called 911 for an ambulance but none was available.
Officials from around the county stressed the need to address the deficiency immediately.
“Citizens in the county would just be outraged if they knew the county falls so short on these goals,” said Carrboro Alderman Randee Haven-O’Donnell. “What you have here amounts to the potential of a perfect storm.”
Several officials said the provision of emergency services to county residents outweighed the costs, even in a tight budget year.
“The financial implications are very, very difficult, but the human considerations are immense in the level of risk we’re taking,” said Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens.
EMS’s growing inability to provide has begun to affect other local departments. Montes de Oca said residents sometimes rely on the fire department to provide assistance until his ambulances arrive.
Chapel Hill Fire Chief Dan Jones urged the county to make Montes de Oca’s recommendation’s a priority.
The Chapel Hill Fire Department often works with departments from other counties, but that might change if Orange County doesn’t act, he said.
“We’ve received notices from our neighbors saying ‘We can no longer assist you because you’re not maintaining the level of resources to deal with your own situation,’” Jones said.
“At what point do those counties say to us, ‘That’s enough. You need to address those resource issues, or we’re not going to help you anymore.’”
Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
