I recently received a question on Facebook asking about the station location of our ambulance and response time. It’s a great opportunity to explain more about our service philosophy here at the Madison Township Fire Department.
Our ambulance is stationed at Fire Station 831 on Kitchen Road. While the majority of our calls for service are in the “Landersdale Road district”, geographically our entire service district is quite long from north to south – with no direct route of travel. (See photo of our Township below.) From our northernmost point to our southernmost point, travel time is sixteen minutes. With that in mind, Station 831 is located almost dead center of our district. (It’s a bit south of the original fire house at the roundabout.)
We feel that in keeping with our mission that all of our taxpayers deserve equal service delivery, our ambulance is stationed at the Kitchen Road Station to accomplish that goal with nearly equal travel time north or south. Engine 832 will respond from Station 832 on Landersdale Road with the ambulance to cut those response times.
We would love to staff an ambulance at both stations, however, our budget is very underfunded for the service we need to provide for our customers. Our residents pay a very low tax rate for fire and emergency medical services generally speaking. Many days we struggle to staff one station. If we staffed two ambulances, it would basically leave the Township with no fire protection while those ambulances transported patients. Sometimes transport times can be two hours depending on the patient and destination.
We are working hard to find alternate ways of funding (non-tax dollars) to grow our Department to better serve our 11,000 + customers. I really hope this helps everyone understand our Department more.
