Shelley, Firth fire departments get much needed upgrade to better serve community

SHELLEY, Idaho (KIFI) - For the past 50 years, Shelley Firth Quick Response Unit (QRU) members have strived to provide emergency medical care to the community.

The response unit was originally a utility vehicle first outfitted in the 70s to help these first responders provide life-saving first aid until an ambulance from Idaho Falls or Blackfoot could make it to the scene. With the new ambulances, they will be able to drastically reduce their response times.

"Our goal is to be within town within 2 minutes and to our outlying areas under 10 minutes. So you're going to get that paramedic care in minutes and that's going to be life saving for certain events," Payton Holtom a Shelley-Firth Paramedic said.

But, as the community has grown, the need to have ambulance services in the area become much more apparent.

"Our goal is to be within town within 2 minutes and to our outlying areas under 10 minutes. So you're going to get that paramedic care in minutes and that's going to be life saving for certain events," Holtom said.

So for the past two years, Chief Lyle Barney, Assistant Chief Ben Porter, and many QRU workers have been striving to convert the current QRU into a paramedic and ambulance service.

They were able to purchase two ambulances as well to help them along this process.

"The one behind us came from Star Valley, Wyoming. We got it out of Afton. We pay for part of it out of our budget. And Bingham County commissioners helped us with the remainder. And the white ambulance behind us is from Blackfoot. And that is a retired ambulance from the fire department," Chief Lyle Barney said.

This past January, the conversion was approved by the state. Shelley has since been able to acquire two ambulances and outfitted them to ALS Paramedic level. Payton Holtom shares what this means.

"We're going to have dozens of life saving I.V. medications on the ambulance. We have a ventilator. We have a state of the art monitor that can do face making manual defibrillation, 12 lead EKGs. And on top of that, we have medications to help people stay alive when they're in shock or trauma and things like that. They've got pain medications. This is a huge step for us," Holtom said.

The Ambulances will be based in the Shelley station, however they hope to add more to the Firth in the future.

"We're also going to have a paramedic chief's car. They're able to get through traffic a little easier, get on scene, start stabilizing. We'll have two EMTs in the ambulance and in the future, we hope to have two ambulances in first as well," Holtom said.

The service will officially launch on March 1. A ribbon Cutting will be held at 12 pm at the Shelley Fire Station 585 w Fir St. in Shelley. Anyone is welcome to attend.

Holtom says they are thankfull for the support they have been given and Shelley-Firth EMS team is here to help.

"We're going to bring the community the highest level of care possible," Holtom said.