The Falcon Fire Protection District has had its own ambulance service since December 2019. To date, they now have four ambulances, and Jon Webb, EMS division chief, said that response times have significantly decreased from the days when they only had two ambulances.The first two ambulances were based at Station 1 on Meridian Ranch Road and at Station 4 on Capital Drive. The third ambulance is based at Station 3 on Highway 24 and Old Meridian Road; the fourth is held in reserve.Each ambulance is staffed by one emergency medical technician and one paramedic. All Falcon firefighters receive the six-month training required for EMTs, and the EMTs assigned to ambulance crews are all from within the fire department. The department also has nine full-time paramedics, who are required to complete a two-year training course. Many of the paramedics came from American Medical Response.Webb said while much of the training stems from outside sources, they are working on increasing in-house training.Webb said a mutual aid agreement between FFPD and AMR will allow Falcon to provide backup service to AMR for the area east of Falcon, around Marksheffel Road. There are also mutual aid agreements with surrounding fire departments. Since Ellicott Fire Department has no ambulance service, Falcon handles ambulance calls for Ellicott. Webb said they get quite a few calls from the race track in Ellicott on Saturday evenings.During the COVID 19 pandemic, they followed all CDC guidelines to ensure the safety of employees. Although he could not supply a figure, Webb said they transported a significant number of COVID 19 patients.The current road construction has had little effect on their response time, Webb said, adding that they have worked closely with the contractors who have been sensitive to their needs.In the beginning, the ambulance service had received 90 calls a month. Presently, they average 105 calls a month.
