Kent County’s new West Dover Paramedic Substation is open.
The new substation has been years in the making and Kent County Levy Court director of public safety Chief Colin Faulkner - says it’s needed for a number of reasons.
“We’re constantly reviewing our data and our statistics for responses. And we started noticing that in the Western part of Kent County our data was starting to trend downwards. And part of that is because the station that supports the Western part of Kent County is on the east side of the highway.”
Kent County Levy Court commissioners voted last October to purchase a former gas station on Forrest Avenue and convert the brownfield site into a paramedic station.
Faulkner says having a station on the City’s west side improves response times because emergency personnel won't have to deal with traffic within Dover.
"Dover's extremely busy. It’s hard to get through Dover on a normal day, let alone with lights and sirens on - it still doesn’t help that much trying to get through Dover,” he said.
Faulkner says for now the substation is staffed by two paramedics working 12 hours shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with one truck. The plan is to hire additional paramedics and get another truck.
He says Kent County Public Safety is sending five paramedic candidates to school at the Good Fellowship Ambulance and EMS Training Institute in West Chester, PA.
The new paramedic substation cost $1.2 million.
