Twin City Ambulance issues cease and desist to Town of Tonawanda

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The president of Twin City Ambulance has issued cease and desist letters to Town of Tonawanda leaders after last week's news conference announcing a new ambulance service, saying claims of a one hour-plus response time is defamatory.

Twin City Ambulance President Terrence Clark said that during last week's news conference, Tonawanda Supervisor Joe Emminger made claims involving alleged response times of well over an hour.

"We did a review of our call responses, and not a single call in the last 12 months exceeded an hour. In fact, I think the longest call that we had was approximately 36 minutes," said Clark in an interview with WBEN.

Clark notes all calls are cold response, per the town's request. That means ambulances stop at red lights and stop signs without using lights and sirens.

Clark doesn't like the idea of the Town of Tonawanda establishing its own ambulance service.

"One of the things that every town that has done this, particularly in Western New York, has failed to understand is that they need to have more people into the industry, more people trained," Clark said. "Every time an agency does this, they actually draw away EMTs and paramedics from the other agencies in the in the vicinity. And every time that happens, it makes it less and less efficient."

Clark wants to preserve the reputation of his company, and ultimately wants a retraction and a public statement acknowledging that those statements were not true.

Any legal action, at this point, is up in the air.