Ambulance Emergency
- William Darron
- Jun 29
- 11 min read
Rush is facing the end of its all-volunteer ambulance service provided to residents by the Rush Fire Department (RFD). This is not the end of an ambulance based in Rush, but it is potentially the end of the ambulance being crewed and managed solely by Rush volunteers. Since 1939, the RFD has been providing Basic Life Support (BLS) services for residents of Rush and the area around it.
Determining if a patient needs BLS or Advance Life Support (ALS) services depends on the patient’s condition and the medical interventions required during transport. For instance, a patient with back pain may require BLS services, while someone experiencing chest pains would need ALS services. The Monroe County 911 dispatcher determines what care a patient needs when a call comes in. If a Rush patient needs only Basic Life Support services, then a request for an ambulance is sent to the RFD.
To send out the Rush ambulance, there must be an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) on board. The training to become an EMT takes a minimum of 160 hours and can take between 5-6 months to complete. The program requires classroom and field time prior to taking a NYS certification examination. Considerable ongoing training is required to remain certified.
Rush has 12 EMTs and only four choose to ride the ambulance. The ambulance needs to respond to calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
An alternative service called CHS Mobile Integrated Healthcare provides an ambulance service when the Rush volunteers don’t respond or if Advanced Life Support service is required. The RFD does not have a higher-level trained Paramedic that is required for ALS calls. If the call requires ALS service, either CHS or the Honeoye Falls – Mendon Volunteer Ambulance responds depending on geography and availability. Both CHS and Honeoye Falls can send a police like SUV with a Paramedic to help the RFD’s ambulance if needed. If Rush dispatches an ambulance and ALS is needed, then a Paramedic in a “fly car” with additional equipment can rush to meet the ambulance at the patient’s location.
For several years, Rush volunteers have had issues with not responding to enough ambulance calls. When the siren sounds, at least one trained EMT needs to ride the ambulance. Lately, CHS ambulance transports about 80 to 85% of the calls assigned to the RFD ambulance. Since 2024 CHS dispatches an ambulance when the RFD is called in case the volunteers don’t show up. The CHS ambulance is returned to service if the RFD responds.
CHS was formed in 2017 through the merger of three volunteer ambulance agencies — Chili Volunteer Ambulance, Henrietta Volunteer Ambulance, and Scottsville Rescue Squad. CHS is a the primary EMS provider in parts of southwestern Monroe County including Chili, Henrietta, Scottsville, Wheatland, Rush, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and neighboring towns. CHS is a non-profit, tax‑supported provider that also bills patients’ insurance to help cover its fleet, equipment, training, and facility expenses. CHS operates 17 vehicles and has approximately 100 career and volunteer personnel.
The RFD low ambulance response rate issue has grown to the point where the Rush Fire District is taking action to dissolve the volunteer ambulance service and replace it permanently with CHS. This would be done by selling the Rush ambulance to CHS and letting it remain in the Rush firehouse. The ambulance would still accept volunteers from the RFD but its primary crew would come from CHS. RFD members could become employees of CHS or continue to volunteer and crew the ambulance under its management. RFD members could get training and help with their certification. Rush EMT’s could be equipped with a take home “fly car” that allows them to respond to ambulance calls.
The volunteers of the Rush Fire Department are not happy about this situation. The logic of this decision is made by practicality. The decision neglects the humanity of the Rush Fire Department.
Rush has always been a small and poorer town. Historically its residents have worked together to solve community problems. There has never been a bank or any other big business investment that contributes to satisfying the needs of the community. For most of its history, everything in Rush was accomplished by a “grass roots” method. Changing times have greatly diminished this momentum. The Rush Fire Department is the largest active, secular charitable organization in town. It has helped to define the town for over a century.
Until the 1960’s, Rush was populated mainly by small farmers owned by generations of the same families. There were also small locally owned businesses in town. Local people who worked for themselves in Rush had a constant reminder of the fire department’s presence. Every weekday at noon the fire siren blew once so farmers in the field knew to go home for lunch. This practice has ended. When the siren blew for an emergency, firemen in their fields or shops were able to drop their tools or aprons and run to the firehouse. Things have changed much since those days.
The neighboring Village of Honeoye Falls got electricity in 1890. Rush didn’t until 40 years later in 1930. Rush didn’t have a Town Hall in 1920, but it did have three or four general stores and a canning factory and a grist mill. Meetings and public gatherings were held in Kinsey’s Hall, which was on the upper floor of his general store in town. On Saturday, December 4, 1920, 22 men signed an agreement at a meeting at Kinsey’s, and the Rush Fire Department was formed.
Townspeople donated money and a chemical fire truck was purchased. It was kept in the Owen-Wiles garage (where Papa’s Auto is now) and later in a barn that was remodeled into a firehouse. A siren was purchased and placed on the mill in town.
In 1927 the Rush Fire District was formed. It became the elected governing body of the volunteer firefighting services in Rush. The district is overseen by a volunteer board of five elected Fire Commissioners serving staggered five-year terms. The Town collects taxes to fund the fire district, and the Commissioners oversee the spending by the volunteers who man the equipment. The district exists to protect lives, property, and public safety by ensuring trained volunteers and well-maintained apparatus are ready to respond. The Town of Rush’s adopted 2025 budget tax levy is $513,904, showing a slight decrease from 2024.
The Rush Town Hall was constructed in 1936 and the fire trucks moved in. The mill burned in 1941, and the siren was recovered and placed on a tower next to the Town Hall.
In 1939 the firemen purchased a sedan-type (carry all) Chevrolet along with a stretcher and a first aid kit, beginning the Rush Fire Department ambulance service. The ambulance was kept in the firehouse with the two pumpers.
Rush was the first fire department in New York State to get a Rescue Truck. In 1957 R-1 and the ambulance moved to a small building with two bays on Rush Mendon Road. The building was built by the RFD using funds it donated to the district.
In 1971 a new building was built with the fire department donating the land. All the trucks and the ambulance moved in. With the fire equipment out of the Town Hall, the library was provided with space to expand. The same fire siren from the 1930’s was installed on the new building where it still sounds off today.
Rush Fire Department has always been a special kind of social club with a bigger purpose. Along with fighting all kinds of fires and providing BLS ambulance service, the RFD’s volunteer members provide safety training and run a Firematic Explorer Post for youth. The RFD sponsors Boy Scout Troop 134. RFD hosts the last big social community activity in town: the annual fireman’s carnival and parade. Proceeds from the carnival have contributed greatly to the purchase of safety vehicles and equipment as well as providing operating expenses. Firemen are heavily invested in the public welfare of Rush.
The Rush Fire Department sees the ambulance being taken away from them as an affront.
Rush’s Firemen and its Ladies Auxiliary are a loyal, amicable and fearsome bunch. For free they come running at all hours under all conditions to help people in need. The cost for their services is paid for by taxes collected by the town for the Fire District and is greatly enhanced by their fundraising efforts. The RFD has donated millions of dollars to the Rush Fire District. According to the Rush Fire District website, 90% of the ambulance operation is funded by the RFD through donations and proceeds from the carnival. This means that the taxpayer dollars paid to the Fire District only funds 10% of the ambulance service.
The only problem today with Rush firefighters TODAY is that there aren’t enough of them.
Beginning in the 1950’s, housing developments started to replace farmers’ fields. In the late 1970’s the route 390 expressway was completed. Family farming was dying and local businesses started closing. Today there aren’t enough adults living or working in Rush with that can afford to drop everything to run to the firehouse when the siren blows.
For 50 years Rush has resisted almost all commercial development that could replace jobs lost to commuting and the end of family farming. For the last 40 years, houses have been built bigger on larger plots of land.
Many are too expensive for most younger families. Most of the property-owning population is aged over 40. Of those who can afford to live in a Rush house, a majority are busy working at a job away from Rush to pay for them. They are not in town during work hours and can’t answer fire calls. Many of the older residents who are home are more likely to be riding the ambulance as patients as opposed to crewing it.
This isn’t a problem only in Rush. The New York State Emergency Medical Services Council published a report in 2019 and an update in 2024 on the EMS workforce shortage. The executive summary for the 2024 report says:
Career and volunteer emergency medical service agencies in New York State are struggling to cope with a growing shortage of EMS responders. The number of active certified EMS responders in New York has declined by 17.5% from 2019 to 2022, according to the NYS Department of Health Division of State Emergency Medical Services.
Conclusions from the 2019 report say:
52% of agencies utilizing volunteer responders reported their ability for timely EMS responses in their community was moderately or severely impaired by certified volunteer staff shortages; 29% of agencies reported frequent delayed responses or missing calls due to the shortage.
The total number of ambulance services in NYS has decreased by 9% over the past 10 years from 1,078 to 982. Rush seems destined to become part of this statistic.
This issue of the volunteer response rate has been an ongoing discussion between the Commissioners of the Fire District and the leadership of the volunteers for some time. No matter what has been tried, to date it has not been successful. For a time, the RFD offered gift card bonuses to members who performed better. The initiative had limited effect and was discontinued.
In January of 2023 the Rush Fire District website advertised a job opening to fill the newly created position of “Laborer”. The requirements are that the person:
Must be at least 21 years of age to apply, hold a valid NYS drivers’ license class D or higher, possess a high school diploma or equivalency, have basic computer skills, good verbal and communication skills.
The successful candidate will be a current member of a volunteer fire department and hold an EMT card.
The job description is:
This position will consist of multiple qualified individuals filling one position on a part-time basis. These individuals are responsible for the independent performance of both clerical and physical duties. The employees will work with hand tools, light equipment, computerized systems/software, and interact with District members, vendors and the public. This position reports directly to the Commissioner of Personnel.
This position is meant to be a first response to an incoming call and is not tied to the Rush Fire District Ambulance.
Laborers work Monday through Friday and some Saturdays.
The Rush Town Board meeting of June 26th presented two sides of this story. The board granted the Fire District and the RFD a few minutes each to discuss the issues.
Rush Fire District Chairman Scott Goodman laid out many of the details presented here as the reasons why he and two other commissioners voted to dissolve the RFD ambulance at the June 17th meeting of the Fire District Commissioners.
And then Rush Fire Department President Heidi Sweet stepped up to the microphone. Her speech revealed that one commissioner who voted to dissolve the ambulance service never submitted his “oath of office” paperwork. A technicality that the RFD believes nullifies his election and therefore nullifies his vote to dissolve the ambulance.
President Sweet then questioned the role of the hired laborers, who are required to be firefighters and EMTs but by job description were not tied to the ambulance service. She also stressed that if the ambulance were owned by CHS, it could be dispatched anywhere in the area they covered. She implied that the Rush ambulance could be gone on a call elsewhere when someone in Rush needed it. She also commented on the “effective immediately” communication of the commissioners, leading to confusion about the implementation of the dissolution of ambulance services by RFD.
Her plea to the townspeople was to pay attention and vote for Fire Commissioners as knowledge of the issues and voter turnout for their December elections is low.
What will be the outcome of this feud within the fire fighters of Rush? It seems that a legal struggle will perhaps postpone the end of volunteer ambulance service. Perhaps some compromise can be made for an arrangement that provides for the safety of the community and preserves a century of a local organization with a noble purpose.
Missing entirely from this discussion is the social impact of diminishing the role of the fire department. Perhaps the town needs to discuss what kind of community it wants to be. Is it to be a modern residential suburb run with quantifiable efficiency and precision? Is there room for social and humanitarian charity that is not reflected in statistics? Where is the balance between the two?
The answer to the future of the volunteer ambulance in Rush is an indication of the kind of place that Rush should endeavor to become.
Links
NYS Department of Health - State Emergency Medical Services Council
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