Ambulance Stations

[Scott A. Anderson]

How many of us had to sit in dirty sub-standard ambulance stations between runs over the years?

The attached photo is a house that served as an ambulance station and dog grooming shop. The wiring system had the well and the window air conditioner on the same circuit, so if you flushed the toilet in hot weather, it blew the breaker. No cable television, so we had tin foil creatively draped on a rabbit ears type of antenna on top of the set. And the set was an old black and white that was liberated from some hospital. The garage door was manually operated and did not lock, so we just locked the door between the garage and the quarters. The quarters itself was the small area behind the ambulance in the photo. The open door in the garage lead into the quarters. The whole rest of the house was the dog grooming shop. You backed the ambulance in until the rear bumper touched the back wall and you had just enough room to close the garage door. This station was in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka in the area referred to as 7-Hi.

Later on, I worked for another service in the twin cities that had an ambulance station inside a wholesale florist warehouse. The ambulance parked in a space along the loading dock inside the warehouse, and the quarters was in a plywood room that was thrown together up on the dock. All day long semi's delivered new stock, and smaller delivery trucks took flowers and related material to retail flower shops. We often had to wait for trucks to move in order to enter the garage or to leave on calls. No code enforcement in those days. The building had no fire sprinklers and there were no smoke detectors in the building. They marked out a path on the floor with tape so we could use the restrooms after hours. As long as we stayed inside the marked pathway, we did not set off the security alarms.

 

[Bruce Oliphant]

The second private service that I worked for put us up in a 12' travel trailer that was parked behind a chicken restaurant that was owned by our boss. It sat next to the dumpster and they ran an extension cord from inside the restaurant into the travel trailer. If we needed water we used the outside water hose. We parked the rig outside. No tv, no radio, nothing. We tried to hang out inside the chicken shack as much as we could and the bright side was we got to eat for half price. I'm not as fond of fried chicken now as I once was.

 

[Scott Crittenden]

Wow, the old days, when you got a station, and you bitched about it! How I miss our crack house! We complained about rodents, insects, questionable HVAC and general hygiene or lack there of. Never thought the day would come where I got to post in a variety of parking lost. Enjoying my ambulance for the shift. Posting was what the "other" guys did! Yup, we now post!

 

[Dean Wilkinson]

Had our fair share of gems in the early days. One station was in a public works garage next to the town dump. The joke was that you went to bed at night and you woke up in the morning with the furniture on the opposite side of the room, having been moved over night by the bugs and rodents. From there we went into a 12 foot trailer (the truck sat outside year round) with an outhouse (portajohn)and no running water. There was a hotel across the street and during their business hours, you used the facilities there. Our new 2 unit stations cost more than a million dollars each and staff still complain.

 

[Rich Koski]

We had a portajohn at one of our stations and when it got cold in the winter someone had the bright idea to move it inside the garage. Needless to say that didn't last long as the garage was attached to the crew quarters and the stench was terrible. Another one of our stations was at a small airport where we shared a hanger with half a dozen airplanes.

 

[John ED Renstrom]

started out in a abandoned gas station. one that the ladies was inside and the men's out. it sat even with the street but the retaining wall from the bay to the street went along the lot line. pulling out wasn't bad. but backing in you had the dog leg to do and the sump to miss. the lift was gone but the concrete runners were still there. we had one gal back the rig in till she had it side ways agents the back wall. she got out slammed the door and said I got it in you can get it out and left. you could almost heat it in the winter time. the mens room would freeze up and yu could see you breath in the bay.

 

[Ron Devies]

We had a decent station. Five bays, TV room, dorm that slept 5, the bathroom was a little small but the ceiling was papered with centerfolds. You could not get away with that today.

 

[Russell Dalziel]

Wow, the old days, when you got a station, and you bitched about it! How I miss our crack house! We complained about rodents, insects, questionable HVAC and general hygiene or lack there of. Never thought the day would come where I got to post in a variety of parking lost. Enjoying my ambulance for the shift. Posting was what the "other" guys did! Yup, we now post!

Thank God for System Status Management LOL


Russ

 

[Richard Vyse]

I started out with Zelley Funeral Home/Ambulance Flint, MI. We occupied a residence for attendants and used as an office next to the funeral home. However, if a body was in the funeral home the dispatcher had to sleep there. Not bad at all.
When working for Alert Ambulance they had sub stations which met the needs, barely. I worked for Brady who owned Superior Ambulance for a short bit. He had a huge facility in downtown Flint used for office, dorms, and garaged the rigs as wells as storage for vehicles. That was a pretty nice operation.

 

[Steve Tarbert]

My first station was a renovated Sohio station that went from two bays to six and had a nice day room, bunkroom, etc. I also worked out of one that had a fiberglass lean-to that house a Superior 61 fat body Chevy. My all-time favorite was my last, located in Bellevue, OH that was built in 2005-6 by North Central EMS. I will try to put a pic on here. Before moving into it, we were housed at the former Bellevue Fire Station. A picture of it is in the photo section under Faves album.

 

[Steve Lichtman]

This was the SSAS "crack house" quarters. Oh, it looks OK in this photo. But there were 15 rigs based there. No indoor garage. There was a little parking lot in the back which you could fit 4 rigs in. The lot up front had three parking spaces. The driveway down the hill could fit about 6 rigs single file. You could put another 2 or 3 diagonally in various spaces. The place was gross and crawling with bugs. Oh, and the railroad tracks and subway tracks ran right behind it. The bathroom didn't always flush. And there were various non-English-speaking auto repair shops next door (out of the photo to the left). It was in a rough neighborhood, and I'm not sure the door locked. Oh, how I miss that place - not!

And, when I was in Tulsa, our base in Sand Springs, OK, was initially room #116 at the Knights Inn motel, with the rig parked in the parking lt. EMSA rented it by the month, but this was a motel you could also rent rooms by the hour. Fun. We eventually "upgraded" to a single-wide trailer with a "carport" for the ambulance. Of course, the last place you want to be in Oklahoma is a trailer - it's a tornado magnet and flood magnet (and it was located in the flood plain of the Arkansas River).

 

[Brendan Martin]

We had a decent station. Five bays, TV room, dorm that slept 5, the bathroom was a little small but the ceiling was papered with centerfolds. You could not get away with that today.

How much time did you spend in that bathroom Ron???

 

[Brendan Martin]

I worked fora private ambulance in Providence. There were about ten ambulances, and five wheelchair vans. The building was a real dump. One bunk bed, a couch, vending machine, filthy toilet and time clock. Nestled in between the Chad Brown Housing Project and Providence College. I don't miss it.

 

[Mike Doll]

Metropolitan Ambulance in Glen Burnie, MD back in the mid to late 1970s had an old house on Crain Hywy. The business offices, dispatche and kitchen were on the first floor. The upstairs was the "sleeping quarters" and bathroom for the night and weekend crews. The 8 rigs parked out in front of the house and employees behind the house. Metropolitan eventaully upgraded in the early 1980's by adding a second floor onto an auto repair shop that was owned by the same guy that had the ambulance service.

 

[Russell Street]

My first station was a renovated Sohio station that went from two bays to six and had a nice day room, bunkroom, etc. I also worked out of one that had a fiberglass lean-to that house a Superior 61 fat body Chevy. My all-time favorite was my last, located in Bellevue, OH that was built in 2005-6 by North Central EMS. I will try to put a pic on here. Before moving into it, we were housed at the former Bellevue Fire Station. A picture of it is in the photo section under Faves album.

Here is a picture of the North Central station in Bellevue.

 

[Steve Tarbert]

I couldn't remember taking a picture at that angle form the East of Chicago parking lot. I then scrolled back up and saw who took it. Thank you very much and PS I added it to my pics from North Central. I worked out of there from the day it opened until the end of March 2009 when they found my lung cancer. The worst thing about it's location was all the snow seemed to drift the garage doors in and we couldn't get any of the rigs out.

 

[Doug Benson]

Adams Ambulance, Downey, California, station in the mid-80's. Think I'd rather sleep in the ambulance...

 

[Derrick Walden]

Stations

How I remember some of the stations I've been in throughout my career . One time , we were temporarily quartered in an old shoe shop right in a shopping center on the main drag and when we got a call it took us a couple minutes to get out onto the road because of the traffic . Then , we had a station that was in the basement of what was once a pre school where the roof always leaked and the toilet seldom worked . Things got better over time after the hospital took over and we have nice facilities now !

 

[Randy Loy]

This topic sure brings back some memories! I started out in EMS back in 1974 with a newly formed volunteer squad that was operating out of a former service station. It wasn't a bad set up. The gas pumps had been removed and the building renovated for our use. It had a decent bathroom and the front office area (this was of course in the days before convenience store/gas station combos were common) was set up as the dispatch area and crew lounge. I can't recall exactly where the midnight crew slept. I'm thinking there was an area off the bay area that was the bunk room, but I never worked the night shift at that location. Later we moved to another former service station that was very nicely set up and had an addition added for offices and a bunk room. I worked plenty of midnights there.

Then I went to work for a private ambulance service in a larger city and boy did things change! When I started we operated out of a basement apartment in a building that housed our administrative offices on the first floor and rental apartments on the second floor. A detached garage was located at the rear of the building to house the ambulances. Now this was in a rather seedy part of town and one time when all of three crews were out on calls someone broke in and stole any hemostats we had left lying around. Since the dispatch area was upstairs in the office area, nobody saw the break-in. Likely the culprit/s had no intention of using the hemostats to render medical care! Anyhow, the private service eventually bought a decommissioned fire station from the city and that turned out to be a pretty nice place to work out of.

The same private ambulance service had a substation in a town about 15 miles away and I was assigned there for about a year. When I started at the substation they were operating out of a small room in a volunteer fire station. Apparently the ambulance service’s owner had worked out some kind of rental arrangement with the volunteers. The room had no heat other than a natural gas cooking stove that always had one burner lit during cold weather. That arrangement scared me to death! During the time I was assigned to the substation we also worked out of a duplex rental apartment where we parked the ambulance in the gravel parking lot. We also at one point even operated out of a motel room for several months. If I hadn’t been young and caught up in the excitement of being one of those “new fangled paramedics” in the pioneer days of EMS (a friend of mine called it having “paramedic fever”) I probably wouldn’t have put up with the conditions.

 

[Terry Lange]

Since this thread is still going strong, I'll throw in my story here. I worked for Veterans-Prince/Astorian/Irish/Crestview/Professional Ambulance in Winnipeg, Manitoba from mid '71 to mid '75. They were the largest firm (5 cars) in a very competitve market (note the multiple names), in a city of about 400,000. Ours was the only ambulance service who actually had an office. The other 7 private operators all ran out of their homes or apartments. Our office was located in the core area of the city, and was basically a store front building shared with another business next door. Our part of the building consisted of a front office and dispatch center, a small administrative office behind it, and crews quarters and a small storage area at the rear of the building. The crews quarters consisted of a hide-a-bed, two roll away beds, a kitchen table, fridge, and tv and a bathroom. I lived in that office for at least 2 of the 4 years that I worked there, having to return there at night even on my days off, as I had nowhere else to go. That made for a pretty disappointing social life! As long as I was living there, I was expected to respond to calls, 24/7. Kerry also worked there for some of this time period.

The other half of the building was occupied by a shoe shine parlor. The guy who ran it also took in laundry, which seemed strange, since there was a full service dry cleaner right next door. The general consensus was that he was also a bootlegger, as most of his customers arrived well after regular business hours. It was not unusual to hear disputes and scuffles going on in there, as the walls were pretty thin. After hearing another disagreement one night, we found him the next day, dead, with a butcher knife shoved where the sun don't shine. We did do the removal, but the owner of our service wouldn't let us use the good cot! A barber who had a shop just a block away was later charged and convicted of the crime. I lost the guy who used to shine my shoes and the barber who cut my hair, all in a short period of time!

Like others have stated on this thread, these were some of the best years of my life, and I have few regrets. I was doing what I wanted to do, and getting to do it 24 hours a day was just a bonus.

If you look in the background of the attached picture, you can see our half of the building, with the Veterans-Prince Ambulance lighted sign above the window.

Terry