CALAIS, Maine — At an “emergency” special meeting March 31, the Calais City Council voted to buy a new ambulance.
“Ambulance Rescue 3 — repair or replacement” was the only item on the agenda for the special meeting.
Fire Chief Robert Posick said Wednesday crews turned off the engine of the ambulance, a 2001 model with 175,000 miles on it, after it returned from a recent run. Then it would not start again. Mechanics are still trying to figure out the problem.
Calais Fire and EMS, which answered 1,800 calls last year, originally planned to replace the vehicle in July.
“[The situation] is not unexpected,” Posick said Wednesday.
“We have four units, but if we’re down one, sometimes you don’t have a unit available,” city Manager Jim Porter said Wednesday.
Posick said the fleet is designed to run with four units, and being down one is “not a good thing.”
“We’re not going to have the new ambulance tomorrow,” Porter said. However, the company from which the city intends to buy has agreed to provide a loaner vehicle until the new one arrives.
Because the city and company are still negotiating, Porter said he did not know when the new vehicle would be in service. He also said he could not comment on the costs, though it would be significant.
It will be more than $90,000, which would be the cost to put the old box — the portion of the vehicle that carries the patient and medical equipment — on a new chassis, he said. However, the box is not in good enough condition to remount on a new chassis, Porter said.
Calais either will trade in or sell the current vehicle to get out of it whatever funds it can, Porter said.