The stations, located at 2304 Hopewell Road in Wentzville and 835 Friedens Road in St. Charles, will be staffed around the clock with two Paramedics ready to respond to 911 emergency calls. The quantity of said emergencies is on the rise in – from 2014 to 2015, requests for service grew nearly eight percent to more than 35,000, and are up another five percent year-to-date.
The Wentzville station opens December 7, and is a new location for SCCAD. Strategically situated at the corner of Hwy N and Hopewell Road just west of the end of MO-364, the District purchased the property for the station in 2005 recognizing that the area would grow exponentially following the completion of the Page Extension.
The St. Charles location opened November 30, and is a rebuild of a structure that served as an ambulance station since 1978. Prior to that, the facility served as the St. Charles County Morgue. In addition to repair issues that accompany aging infrastructure, the old station was capable of housing only one ambulance. The new facility will enable SCCAD to house multiple units and/or other equipment such as all-terrain vehicles, trailers and other emergency response apparatus.
“The Wentzville and St. Charles stations are the first steps in the District’s 10-year capital improvement plan that will position us to maintain the short response times that residents of our community regularly tell us are important to them,” said SCCAD Chief Taz Meyer, “That plan will continue in 2017 with a reconfiguration of station locations along and north of the I-70 corridor in O’Fallon.”
The infrastructure improvement projects being completed are possible thanks to residents’ approval of Proposition E – an 11-cent tax levy increase that was approved by a wide margin in April 2014. In addition to expanding infrastructure, the measure enabled the Ambulance District to increase Paramedic staffing and invest in state-of-the-art lifesaving equipment.