Talkeetna area EMS to get new ambulance

Talkeetna Fire Department will be getting a new ambulance.  The Mat Su Borough Assembly approved spending for the new ambulance at their last assembly meeting.

Manager John Duffy says the appropriation has been approved but that doesn’t mean the ambulance will be here tomorrow.  It takes time to order the vehicle and have it manufactured.  It is then transported to Alaska.

Clint Vardeman, the Borough’s Deputy Director of Emergency Services, says it will take about 200 days to manufacture once the ambulance is actually ordered.

He says it depends on the condition of the old ambulance to what might happen to it.  Sometimes used ambulances will be made available for another village or town in Alaska.  It might also stay in the Borough as a stand by ambulance.  Vardeman says Station Eleven Two, the emergency station at the Talkeetna Spur Road Junction and the Highway, is the one slated to receive the new vehicle.  With all the emergency equipment on board, Vardeman says the ambulance will cost around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.