New Lincoln ambulance sets March startup date

LINCOLN – An ambulance has been purchased and a startup director has been hired, and the town’s new ambulance service is due to start in March, Fire Chief William Lee said Tuesday.

The new Lincoln Municipal Ambulance Service will create about 20 part-time jobs for emergency medical technicians or paramedics, Lee said. The new hires will be paid $12 to $20 per hour, depending on experience and training level.

Lee and Town Manager Glenn Aho hoped to have the new service running by next month, but several steps have yet to be taken, including hiring paramedics and some of the licensing, Lee said.

Lee said he hopes to have an ordinance proposal creating the ambulance service and job descriptions for the Town Council to review at one of its February meetings.

“This is just one more step in the process,” Lee said Tuesday. “We’d like to have gotten it going, but it’s a lot of work. There was too much of a workload on me in December.”

The ambulance, a rebuilt 1999 Ford E-450 PL Custom ambulance purchased for $48,680, arrived last month. It is fully marked with decals, but still needs licenses and some equipment that has yet to be purchased, he said.

The new director, Joel Sides, a paramedic who lives in the Howland area, will get the ambulance service operational, but Lee will run it as part of the Fire Department, Aho said. Lee will meet with Sides on Thursday to establish a timeline for the service startup.

The service will ferry patients from Penobscot Valley Hospital to other facilities. The new service won’t replace or supplement the Penobscot Valley Hospital ambulance service, which typically handles 911 calls, hospital officials said.

Instead, it will share the load carried by the ambulances of the East Millinocket Fire Department, which has been the sole provider of ambulance service transferring patients from Penobscot Valley to other facilities.

The new service, however, should make it unnecessary to use Penobscot Valley ambulances for transfers, thereby keeping emergency ambulance coverage at full strength.

The new service should handle about 250 transfers annually, Lee has said. The hiring process for the part-time attendants and paramedics should begin within a month or so.

Lee also is working to establish a pharmaceutical agreement with the hospital, Aho said.

In other fire department news:

. Lee and firefighters will start regularly reviewing emergencies and other major incidents that the department handles. The critiques will help the department continue to improve, Aho said. Town Councilor Thora House suggested the reviews.

. The department’s monthly inspections of town fire extinguishers have been extended to include the Chester municipal building.