Ambulance stationed at the Cornbelt Fire Department will help reduce response times

By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com

Speed is important for athletes participating in a foot race.

Not so much for motorists driving on the interstate.

Speed is paramount in importance, too, for medics dealing with emergency situations.

The response time in Mahomet got faster as of 7 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 11.

A partnership between the Cornbelt Fire Protection District and Carle Arrow Ambulance — which began in 1996 — was expanded to include a full-time ambulance stationed at the Mahomet fire house.

The original agreement 22 years ago provided for paramedics from Carle Arrow Ambulance to be on duty at Mahomet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

When a 9-1-1 call came in, the medics were dispatched immediately. Simultaneously, an ambulance was also sent from Champaign to the site where first-responders were located.

The patient was getting the same on-site care as if personnel from an ambulance service were there, with one big difference.

No matter how serious the situation was, the person couldn’t be transported to a hospital immediately. The Mahomet paramedics could provide treatment, but not the transportation.

Now, an ambulance is available in town 24/7, every day of the year.

“This will cut 15 minutes off and that’s a tremendous amount of time,” Mahomet fire chief John Koller said. “On average, we expect a 4 1/2-minute response time to put a patient in the ambulance and be gone.

“That’s very, very important to us.”

Carle is providing an ambulance — which has approximately 50,000 miles on it — as well as all of the equipment and will also cover the fuel costs.

In addition, Carle will provide three full-time paramedics. The Mahomet Fire Protection District will provide three full-time Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs).

The best part, Koller said, is “it’s at zero additional cost to taxpayers.”

Mahomet native Jimmy Zindars — a 1991 M-S graduate who joined Cornbelt in September, 1991 — is now the operations manager at Carle Arrow Ambulance.

He is proud that his hometown tries to exceed response times that are acceptable throughout the country.

“The national standard is 90 seconds from the time of dispatch to get en route,” Zindars said. “We want to be quicker.

“We’re out the door in a minute, sometimes before the dispatch is done.”

When the proposed new agreement was presented to the Cornbelt Fire Protection Board of Trustees, there was no resistance.

“We had to do something,” said Tom Pike, the Board President for 12 years. “This is something that should have been done a long time ago.”

Koller said statistics from 1996 show that dispatches were made for 243 medical calls. That number ballooned to 758 in 2018.

“Things have blown up,” Pike said.

Cornbelt is serving a larger population than it was 22 years ago when there were approximately 10,000 residents. That total has grown 70 percent to about 17,000.

Koller said numerous options were discussed before settling on the expanded agreement with Carle Arrow Ambulance.

“For about a year, we’ve talked about possible improvements to the service we have,” Koller said. “We looked at what our needs are.

“Was it a new truck? Or a new hose? This was the largest need because 67 percent of our 1,200 calls (annually) are medical.

“We’re the busiest Fire Protection District in Central Illinois.”

What was settled on, Koller said, is “the only fire-based ambulance in Champaign County.”

Paramedics Paul Cundiff, Chris Humer and Matt Myers will rotate shifts in Mahomet.

The local EMTs will be Austin Gray, Dustin Haake and Hayden Painter.

Humer, a Tolono native, has worked in Mahomet for three years.

“We were providing a great service, but this takes it to another level,” Humer said. “For people having strokes, us doing stuff in-house was beneficial, but what they need is a doctor.

“We’re talking 10 to 15 minutes, maybe even 20 minutes, to get an ambulance from Champaign.”

Zindars said the time savings by having the ambulance in town “doesn’t sound like much, but it’s important to shave minutes off the clock.”

Myers agreed.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for the town,” Myers said. “There were times they had to wait for patient care.

“It’s the fact they can get out the door (headed to the hospital) so much quicker.”

Provisions are in place that when Ambulance 2277, the red and white one assigned to Mahomet, is transporting a patient, another one will be made available.

“That was a big part of it,” Koller said. “(Carle Arrow Ambulance) will send another unit out. Without that, we’d have a gap.

“We didn’t want to improve on one end and hurt on another end.”

Cundiff said “the way the system is set up, we’ll only run 9-1-1 calls and when we’re done at the hospital, we will return immediately.”

There will be additional personnel available at Mahomet to fill in as needed.

“We’ve started a second unit (of volunteers) that will likely have paramedics,” Koller added.

The freshly painted ambulance, which was already in the Carle Arrow fleet, was delivered to Mahomet on Friday so that it could be on display at Saturday afternoon’s open house at the fire station.

Approximately 50 people attended that gathering.

The ambulance was officially available for use on Monday (Feb. 11) at 7 a.m.

Myers said a community-based ambulance is a positive.

“People feel like it’s their own,” he said.