Fire chief says 2nd ambulance needed to prevent 'time bomb' in southern Sampson County

Alan Williams, chief of the Taylor's Bridge Fire Department, said it's only a matter of time before someone dies because an ambulance isn't available. He lobbied county commissioners on Monday to fund a second ambulance for southern Sampson County and six paramedics to staff it.

"When we don't have a truck down here, when our EMS truck's gone, we're pulling resources from the northern end of the county," Williams said. "It's a countywide problem. With only six ambulances to serve a county this size and this population, it just doesn't work."

Five of the county's ambulances serve Clinton and the more populous northern parts of the county.

Williams' department responded to a one-car crash on Bill Town Road, outside Delway, on Monday. No one was seriously hurt, but he said he shudders to think what would have been if someone in the car had been critically injured and the area's one ambulance wasn't available.

"We can provide basic life-saving measures – we run cardiac arrest calls – but can't do chest compressions but for so long," he said. "We're going to need a paramedic there."

He recently saw three calls pending for an ambulance, but every ambulance was tied up with other calls, he said.

"On any given day in this county, there may not be a truck available," he said.

Commissioner Lethia Lee said she recently called 911 because her husband, who had heart disease and kidney failure, was having complications. An ambulance had to come from the far northern end of the county

"It took 45 minutes for the ambulance to get to my house," Lee said. "If he had been in cardiac arrest at that time, he would not have made it, not 45 minutes."

The wait was agonizing, she said.

"It was terrible. I thought he was going to die [at] any time because he was hurting," she said.

Clark Wooten, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, doesn't deny the need for another ambulance, but he said he wants to wait until the county's new emergency management director starts work and can assess the situation.

Richard Sauer, who's from New York state, was hired to lead the county's EMS and starts on Thursday.

"We have to follow the lead of the subject-matter expert and see what he recommends," Wooten said. "We are prepared to do something."

The 2021-22 county budget doesn't include the nearly $230,000 needed for six paramedics, so Williams said he hopes he can convince commissioners of the need to amend the budget.

"It's a statistical time bomb," he said. "That's the way I look at it when you look at the statistics [and] run times. That's what we're trying to avoid."