GRIMES COUNTY, Texas (KRHD) — Grimes County is in the process of purchasing two ambulances to help upgrade the aging fleet.
- The ambulances cost $450,000 each
- The county is applying for a state rural ambulance services grant
- The ambulances will be delivered in 16 to 24 months
Grimes County Commissioner’s Court recently voted to send a letter of intent to purchase two new ambulances for the county.
“The problem is the older a truck gets, the more expensive it becomes to operate” said Billy Rice with St. Joseph Health EMS.
Precinct 4 County Commissioner Phillip Cox tells 15 ABC this is the time to upgrade our local ambulances.
“Well, we based it on the growth and coupled with some recommendations from St. Joseph’s, we felt like that would be a prudent direction for the county to go,” Cox said.
Rice said in a growing county, there is a need to expand the service.
“In Grimes County, we operate four 911 ambulances. There's two in Navasota. There's one in Bedias, and there's one in Todd Mission. But we know that there's growth coming to the south end of the county, and we often run out of ambulances in Grimes County because if you get more than four 911 calls at a time, then we need to rely on counties around us or ambulances coming out of Bryan to meet that need," Rice said.
Commissioner Cox assured 15 ABC that the court wants to be proactive with EMS service.
“Just to assure that the county residents that the commissioner's court is taking this matter seriously, we want to make sure that we don't lose any type of emergency services,” Cox said.
Rice said updating the ambulance fleet will carry the county into the future.
“This is a massive step forward. Rural EMS is tough. It's hard to operate. Revenue is always low in rural communities, and the more community collaboration that we have between St. Joseph EMS and Grimes County and the citizens of Grimes County, the better off EMS will be over the next 10 or 20 years,” Rice said.
