Residents of Kimberly and Morris are fretful about having to deal with long ambulance wait times. This comes after the two communities have decided to stop using ambulances from the neighboring city of Warrior.
This decision was made after Warrior requested that the communities start paying $42,000 a year for the use of their EMT transportation. Both Kimberly and Morris officials declined this request and decided to use a private ambulance service called RPS.
There have been concerns from members of the community about possibly having longer wait times for an ambulance because of this switch, but some citizens might be unaware that RPS has already been serving their community.
Tanya Cowart is a Councilwoman for the city of Kimberly. She said that RPS had been picking up calls that the Warrior ambulance could not take for residents of Kimberly.
“We've already been utilizing RPS. This isn't a new service that's brand new to us. We've been having to use them for the gaps that Warrior wasn't here for, and they will go to the same hospitals… same kind of facilities. That’s what they've been doing [and] what Warrior did. It's really nothing different with the services,” said Cowart.
Cowart has been working with the city of Morris to see what the true difference in response times were. She found that the wait times for the Warrior ambulance is a 10 minute and 55 seconds average and the wait time for RPS is an average of 13 to 14 minutes.
In response to residents who are worried about waiting too long for an ambulance, Cowart said that residents have nothing to worry about.
“Know that Kimberly and Morris are going to do everything they can to make sure our citizens are taken care of,” said Cowart. “We're going to get the facts and just know we will always do here in Kimberly what is best for our citizens.”
Community members are welcome to attend the Kimberly City Council meetings to voice their concerns. These meeting are the second and fourth Monday of every month.
“I'm a big advocate of being active in your community. We've had amazing people that have reached out to myself to the mayor, to our fire chief to gather information rather than believing what they see or read on Facebook. We appreciate those that have reached out to us to get more information,” said Cowart.
