Shelley-Firth Ambulance District looking to expand response area to include Firth

A petition is circulating in northern Bingham County to see if the residents in the Firth area want ambulance service from Shelley instead of the more distant Blackfoot.

To do so, the county commissioners will need to approve expanding the county’s ambulance district south to 350 North.

Currently, the Shelley-Firth Ambulance District stops at 800 N. Goshen Road, just before the city of Firth. This means Blackfoot ambulances are responding to emergencies south of 800 N., even though it is more than twice as far away as Shelley.

Shelley-Firth Chief Lyle Barney is hoping that a petition will show the county commissioners that local residents want the ambulance district to expand so they can receive care faster. Expanding helps fulfill Barney’s goal of providing “Faster response of quality care.”

The petition and commissioner vote to expand is step one to establishing ambulances in Firth. Step two involves purchasing or accepting a donated four-wheel drive ambulance and outfitting it with advanced life saving equipment and medicines. The state requires that every ambulance center have two ambulances in order to have a backup for multiple emergency calls.

The Shelley-Firth Ambulance District officially started in March, though it really began in the early 1970s when volunteers formed a quick response unit. The unit involved an outfitted SUV type vehicle that was staffed with emergency medical technicians that were trained in basic life saving skills and with basic medical equipment and medicine. Their goal was to reach the emergency as quickly as possible and stabilize the patient as best as they could until an ambulance from Idaho Falls or Blackfoot could arrive.

Over the decades, the responders’ skills and the vehicle’s equipment advanced until they reached the advanced emergency medical technician and paramedic-level advanced life saving service. After two years at this higher level, the unit earned a paramedic transport ambulance license from the state in January 2024, with 100 percent compliance on their first attempt.

This license authorized the ambulance district to respond to medical emergencies — and transport the patient to the hospital. Payment for transporting the patient is what pays for 24/7 emergency medical technicians, paramedics, life-saving equipment and medicines.

Now they needed ambulances. The first ambulance was jointly purchased with Bingham County and came from Star Valley, Wyoming. The required second ambulance is a permanent loaner from the city of Blackfoot. After both of these ambulances were outfitted with equipment and supplies, including ICU-level lifesaving equipment and IV medications, the Shelley-Firth Ambulance District officially opened doors on March 1. To date, it has responded to over 250 calls with a dedicated, trained staff of 57 people.

Starting an ambulance service is more than outfitting vehicles and staffing round the clock shifts. Turns out there is a lot of state and insurance paperwork to establish an ambulance service. Nevertheless, over the last five months, Barney has steadily pursued expanding the service to include Firth, as the name promises.

This summer the South Custer County Ambulance District gifted one of its ambulances to the Shelley-Firth Ambulance District which is also now fully outfitted with equipment and supplies. Since it doesn’t have a back-up ambulance to station in Firth with a new ambulance and it hasn’t yet expanded the district boundaries to include Firth, this new ambulance has been part of wildfire fighting teams in Idaho, Utah and California. Wildfire fighting ambulance service shifts are earning revenues for the district, which will help purchase the back-up ambulance it needs for the Firth area.

A point of clarification — though the Shelley-Firth Ambulance District is currently sharing vehicles and office space in the Shelley-Firth Rural Fire District, they are both totally separate agencies with different purposes.

This history update brings us back to the petition to see if a more local ambulance service is wanted by residents and if the county commissioners will approve the new district boundaries. It remains to be seen if the Shelley-Firth Ambulance District will be serving both communities and nearby rural residents of north Bingham County by their first anniversary next spring.