CLARKESVILLE – Habersham County Emergency Services is taking on a new look with the delivery of its newest ambulance.
The emergency vehicle, which was delivered Wednesday, is the first since the Habersham County Ambulance Service began in the early 1970s that is not orange and white.
The new look features a silver body with red and black reflective design elements.
“First of all, I want to say it didn’t cost the taxpayers any extra money,” said HCES Director Chad Black. “This was a new truck, so it would have been the same as a remount or a new truck with our other paint scheme, but it just gives Habersham enough something that shows it’s Habersham.”
After running orange and white ambulances for some 45 years, the new design is something in which Black and his department members can take pride, he said.
“It’s a new look,” Black said. “We’re a new department and we’re making progress and, as you can see from the employees, how excited everybody is to have an ambulance like this that has the CAAS [Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services] safety standards. We meet every safety standard there is now with this new ambulance where we have not done that in the past. People have heard me say protection for our employees is the utmost.”
Habersham County Emergency Services Paramedic Joel Norton was one of the first employees to get a look at the new ambulance when it was delivered Wednesday morning.
“I love it,” Norton said. “It’s awesome. The paint scheme is just phenomenal.”
Norton’s family has a heritage in public safety, and he has 29 years in the field, obtaining his paramedic license about 10 years ago.
“I grew up and all you saw in Habersham was orange and white,” Norton said. “It’s different. It’s a change. We’ve had some good changes. The new color schemes are different, and it makes you proud to work here in Habersham. It seems like we’re going places with what we’re doing. We’re not just repeating day after day and year after year.”
Black is hopeful the new design also will increase the visibility of the ambulance when it is on a scene, thus improving safety for responders.
“This color stands out,” Black said. “It’s eve-catching. It has the fluorescent striping. The doors have the safety features so when a door is open it’s got reflective on the doors so that people catch that. Our big concern is on roadways – mainly the four-lane. We’re on that a lot for accidents and medical calls. My concern there is people not paying attention and our personnel getting hit, so this just adds that extra safety factor. It has more lights than what the trucks have in the past and the LED lighting to get people’s attention and keep our personnel safe is always priority.”
Black said the new design was a collaboration of ideas modifying the former design, combined with input and suggestions from the ambulance builder.
“We’ve taken from our old and redesigned it and made it something that’s very different than anybody else,” Black said.
The new ambulance will be based at Habersham County Station 12 on Duncan Bridge Road, where the call volume is highest.
“It will be in our busiest station,” Black said. “It and [Station] 21 are our busiest. Due to the size of the station, this is a smaller box, so that’s one reason it’s going there. Actually, at that station now is our newest truck, which is a remount that’s a year and a half old and already has 130-something thousand miles. If you add the engine idling hours in, it’s over 200,000 [miles].”
One of the features of the new ambulance is that it can maintain inside temperature without idling.
“This truck, with a separate generator, when we’re at the hospital or a football game or an extended scene, we can actually shut the truck off and the generator runs and continues to keep the patient area cool, medications cool and everything like that,” Black said. “When it’s plugged up in the station, it will stay cool or you can set the thermostat where it will kick on the heat or the air at a certain temperature.”
The new unit, on a Ford F-450 chassis, is a product of Frazer Ltd. in Houston, Texas.
“They’re one of the most quality ambulance builders,” Black said. “Some counties around us have had them – Union County, Towns County, Cherokee, N.C. They’re just quality. Their safety standards and their customer service are second to none, and we’re just very fortunate that we’ve been allowed to go and hopefully this is the product that we’ll purchase from now on. We’re trying to get one type of ambulance where we have three or four from different builders. If we have one, four or five years down the road everything is the same thing. It makes maintenance, parts and everything much simpler to be able to keep in stock at our fleet shop to be able to work on them.”
Last week’s delivery was the first of four that Habersham County Emergency Services will receive over the next six months.
The ambulance just received and the new one that has been ordered are coming out of federal CARES Act funding at no additional cost to county taxpayers. The two remounts are coming out of the county’s capital funds.
The first remount should be back in a couple of months, then the second ambulance will be sent for remount to a new chassis.
“We’ve got this one,” Black said. “We’re in the process of ordering a new one that will be delivered probably in March. We have a remount out that’s going on a new chassis, and then we have another remount that will be going out very shortly, so by March we should have four new ambulances in here – two remounts and two brand new ones, including this one.”
Black said that will get four of the county’s six front-line ambulances updated and including the new design.
Still, Habersham County faces the challenge of keeping ahead of high-mileage units.
“We’re putting an average, low end 60,000 miles, high end 75,000 miles per truck a year,” Black said. “Do the math on that. Two or three years, it’s time to put them on a new chassis.”
And it is not just ambulances that are aging and in need of replacement.
“The next thing we’ve got to focus on is our fire apparatus,” Black said. “We’ve got an issue there, but we’ll continue to work and do the best we can and improve this department, making leaps and bounds, but again our personnel it gives them pride in having something like this. It’s actually a morale booster.”
