RED ROCK — Emergency medical services along Superior’s north shore are one step closer to finding a permanent, new home.
Superior North Emergency Medical Services and Ontario’s ministry of transportation have made some progress in consultation with the township of Red Rock as to where a new EMS ambulance station will be built to service both Red Rock and Nipigon.
While residents in communities along the north shore await updates, a new report from Red Rock’s chief administrative officer Mark Figliomeni provides hope that there is significant progress being made.
“We were asked as a municipality if we had a willingness to be a host community and, if we did, to provide suitable locations,” Figliomeni said.
It was in July 2022 that the Thunder Bay city council unanimously approved a 10-year “master plan” for EMS services in the region, calling for the consolidation of four ambulance bases — Red Rock, Nipigon, Schreiber, and Terrace Bay — into two.
Since its approval, the plan has been met with varied levels of concern and opposition.
Figliomeni said he has been working with Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) to assess locations along highway 17 and within the township of Red Rock.
Together, the ministry and Figliomeni have identified two potential spots for the new EMS station.
Both properties are located along highway 628 — including a property referred to as the “Old Gas Station” and two properties side-by-side that residents might know better as what was once the “Vicmore”.
“We figure and we feel that they’re very suitable, ready to go, accessible pieces of property that have infrastructure in place that could really be desirable and shovel-ready,” Figliomeni said.
He went onto say that another property they considered — an old weigh scale property along Highway 17 — is no longer an option for a number of reasons.
“Due to the highway restructuring and a lot of the expropriation of land… that piece is, in the words of the MTO, more of a sliver now and it wouldn’t be suitable,” Figliomeni said. “The other issue is access to that piece.”
“[The ministry] also informed me that they have additional pieces of property on [Highway] 17… but they could also pose serious challenges based on accessibility.”
Figliomeni said that he reached out to EMS and that they are just about ready to accept applications from Red Rock and Nipigon as to where the new EMS station is going to be built.
“Depending on what they wanted, and if they deemed Red Rock to be suitable, we figured those are good pieces but we could also show them more on the highway based on MTO and we could show them more in town if that was the desire.”
Figliomeni’s recommendation was ultimately that it would be best to give EMS a tour of the proposed station sites and of the township to give a sense of the feasibility and accessibility of the sites identified.
Accessibility is key when it comes to site selection in this process, considering the new EMS ambulance station will serve Red Rock and Nipigon once completed.
Coun. Cindy Brand questioned the two locations that MTO and Figliomeni assessed saying that it was her understanding that the selected site would be more “centrally” located between the two communities.
However, Figliomeni said that what Superior North EMS are looking for is something a little more localized.
“That is a fantastic idea,” Figliomeni said. “The trouble being getting the property there and also the model [that] EMS is choosing to use is to build that within a municipality.”
He concluded that something more centralized “may not be attainable.”
Nipigon Mayor Suzanne Kukko could not comment on plans for the future EMS site.
Figliomeni said that the site selection process can be "tricky" but he remained optimistic about the ways that Red Rock and Nipigon can work together to serve their residents.
"Ultimately, that's the process... We're working together with EMS on it. We understand the situation... and so does the township of Nipigon — we know the situation. And, again, first and foremost we want to work together and try to provide a service. We don't want to see the service diminish... [that's] the key."
With other communities across the north looking to review service delivery and with the advent of bridge-gapping initiatives like the Beardmore paramedicine program, the structure of emergency medical services in Northern Ontario continues to experience a big shift.