Hospital thanks first responders, rolls out new ambulance

Olney Hamilton Hospital feted the city’s first responders and celebrated the arrival of a new, state-of-the-art ambulance at a gathering at the Olney EMS Building on Feb. 9. OHH Administrator Mike Huff thanked the eight fulltime and eight part-time Emergency Medical Services staff, as well as the Olney Police Department and Young County Sheriff ’s Office at the lunchtime event.

“We are probably one of the few EMS in the state who can say we are fully staffed,” Mr. Huff said. “We have one of the finest facilities for the EMS group and it’s paying off. We’ve got a top-notch EMS and we are very proud of them.”

The 6,000-square-foot EMS building, which opened in October of 2021, boasts four individual rooms with bathrooms and desks for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, as well as five ambulance bays that include a decontamination bay, Mr. Huff said.

The EMS recently took delivery of a new, larger ambulance that was ordered about a year ago. Young County commissioners purchased the ambulance for Olney from federal COVID funds. Sheriff Travis Babcock, who attended the shindig, supported the purchase, saying it was “very useful and productive for the county.”

“This is a big county and we need people to respond quick. If we have an emergency here in Olney, they need to have somebody here,” he said. “It’s very useful and very productive for the county.”

Precinct 3 Commissioner Stacey Rogers received kudos from Mr. Huff for rounding up the votes needed to approve the purchase. “We knew that this was a community that needed some support from us and this is something that the county needs to do - to help provide medical services throughout the county and the area,” Mr. Rogers said.

EMS Director Tom Wright said the new ambulance is the city’s first to have four-wheel drive, a critical feature on calls that take the crews to unpaved county roads in bad weather. “When we do have snow and ice days it’s a pretty significant worry,” he said.

Paramedic Shannon Wright, who has already taken calls in the new ambulance, said its larger size and dependability are a big plus. “The other ambulance that we took out of service was 12 or 13 years old and it was on its last legs,” she said. “We were desperate to get one we could depend on. This one is going to help a lot.”