TERRACE BAY — A new, state-of-the-art site for ambulances and emergency medical services that is set to be built in Terrace Bay will benefit that entire stretch of the North Shore and its communities, says the chief of Superior North EMS.
Both Terrace Bay and Schreiber had been lobbying intently to have the new station built in their communities following the controversial announcement that the existing facilities in the neighbouring municipalities would be amalgamated into a single station.
The decision on the site location was announced on Monday at a meeting of Thunder Bay city council after a closed-session portion of the meeting. City council is responsible for the oversight of Superior North EMS.
“We're looking at this as a regional asset,” Shane Muir, the chief of Superior North EMS, said of the decision and the planned new facility. “This is huge for our service, for our paramedics and for the communities.”
“What this really does is (it) brings two stations together to one so that we're supporting our paramedics better in one facility.”
Muir said that means a new station will have better quality of life amenities for paramedics as well as access to updated technology, all within a modern space, “so that we can provide that adequate patient care that we're not meeting right now.”
“By having quick-rise doors, by having operational capability to have everybody located in one station, we can increase our response model and decrease our response times,” Muir continued. “It's something that's going to service the entire North Shore and really help us recruit and retain paramedics to the region.”
Terrace Bay was chosen for the location, he said, based on data around call volumes, how long paramedics spent on calls, and the severity of calls.
Even though Schreiber will be losing a physical EMS building in the community, Muir said the new model will allow for better staggering of paramedic shifts out of the new location. Currently, he said, paramedics are on-call at nights, meaning that when they’re called overnight, they have to first respond to the station, then attend the call.
“So now that we have somebody on site ready to go in uniform with their equipment ready to go, we'll be able to decrease that response time by getting out the door much, much quicker,” he said.
“Even though the travel distance will be a little bit more, that response time to get to the station and get suited up will be much decreased.”
The two communities are about 15 kilometres apart.
And during the daytime, he said paramedics will still have a presence in Schreiber, even though there’s no facility there. “We're hoping that our paramedics are going to be mobile,” he said. “They're going to be roaming between the communities.”
“We're not going to be stuck at the station, so there's not really a pattern to say that they have to be at the base at all times.”
Construction and completion is still a ways off, Muir said, as site evaluation and other pre-construction work is still taking place, however he said he expects to be putting the project out to tender “very shortly.”