The future of emergency services in St. Joseph County

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Recent controversy surrounds the future of the combined ambulance service of Union and North Townships.

Just last week, the Union North Ambulance Service announced its termination of its service for Union Township residents.

Now a county leader believes a proposal to pool resources of county fire departments could also eventually shorten response times and add more resources for emergency medical situations.

“When you call 911, and your child is choking or your parent is having a heart attack or whatever the emergency may be, you need help, and you need it now," said Critchlow.

Portage Township Trustee Jason Critchlow believes many people don't realize how few ambulances there are to service St. Joseph County, especially for people living outside South Bend city limits.

“They're very difficult to maintain and they're very difficult to staff, so for a lot of small entities that's difficult to keep up with," said Critchlow.

Critchlow supports the idea of a consolidating the St. Joseph County fire territories for unincorporated townships hoping in the future, it could include emergency medical services. 

"It creates a lot of stress, even for those EMS providers they're trying to get to you as fast as they can, but because of the limitations of the services they're not available to get there any faster in some areas of the county," said Critchlow.

As county departments struggle to recruit volunteers, South Bend Fire Department helps fill in the gaps through mutual aid agreements with other territories like Mishawaka and Clay.

“We have worked with a few of the county townships fire departments locally too if they need additional resources, if were requested well send units to those townships as well," said Gerard Ellis of South Bend Fire.

But Critchlow doesn't want to have to rely on outside help if the county could have reliable ambulance service just minutes away.

"Entities joining together to create bigger fire territories is not only going to be more efficient with taxpayer dollars, it's going to provide a higher service to the residents of that area," said Critchlow 

There will be public meeting on consolidating incorporated fire territories in St. Joe County this coming Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Station 41.