Lambton EMS is opening a temporary station in Sarnia to expand service while construction of a new $10.8 million headquarters is completed.
The temporary station will be located on Upper Canada Drive near the intersection of Confederation Street and Modeland Road.
It will be staffed by two ambulances during daytime hours and one ambulance overnight starting in July.
Lambton EMS Manager Stephen Turner said this will also allow them to fulfill their commitment to providing an additional 12 hours of daily ambulance service.
The additional service comes with a price tag of $322,250 for an ambulance and equipment, to be funded through EMS capital reserves.
"The intent is to decrease the workload between the ambulances in Sarnia and to decrease the need for having to pull in ambulances from other parts of the county," said Turner. "We want to reduce wait times county-wide and this is part of our strategy. Our average growth in service demand is about six per cent per year, and the population growth is about 0.25 per cent per year. We're markedly outpacing population growth. We want to have the resources available for an aging population."
Turner said service in the Sarnia area will also continue to be provided from the existing EMS stations on George Street and in Bright’s Grove.
"We're in the preliminary phases of doing scoping and architecture and all of those fun things," he said. "We anticipate that we'll probably have a building completed within the next two to three years."
Meanwhile construction of a brand new station, in the area of Highway 402 and Highway 40, was approved by Lambton County Council in March.
The facility will be built within the Western Sarnia Lambton Research Park and will house EMS operations including vehicles, emergency responders and storage.
It will be funded through debenture and reserves. By using the existing commercial floorspace -- for administrative and training facilities -- staff were able to reduce the footprint of the new building by 10,000 square feet and lower construction costs by about $3 million.
Lambton EMS operates out of ten stations, with 82 full-time 9-1-1 paramedics and eight community paramedics, 70 part-time paramedics, plus supervisors and administrative staff.