RED RIVER With the signing of the Capital Outlay funding bill, Gov. Susana Martinez approved $75,000 for improvements to the town ambulance building.

Red River Fire Chief Ron Burnham, who heads the towns Emergency Medical Services Department, said the improvements to the building will help ensure ambulances and the old fire department area arent significantly damaged.

Were replacing the bay doors at our old station on the back of Town Hall, Burnham said, adding the doors were built in the early 1970s and are now too small for the new emergency vehicle fleet. They had also started to wear out. We put in a request to remodel those bay doors to allow for current sizes.

When the town of Red River built its newest fire station, located at 100 East High St., it was only large enough to store the fire trucks. Most of the ambulances have been stationed at Town Hall in the middle of Main Street.

The new framework of the ambulance doors will be 144 square feet on each of the doors, Burnham said. Additionally, with the current frames the ambulances would break off side mirrors or run into other obstacles with the narrow doorframe, and damages to the building also were inevitable. The mechanisms to the doors are more than 40 years old and dont work efficiently.

If we didnt (apply for funding) the remodel, we would have to do this at a considerable cost, he said.

Red River has three advanced-life-support ambulances in its fleet and responds to calls in Red River as well as surrounding areas that dispatch for assistance, if it can be provided. Burnham said in the last month the call volume has slowed down considerably.

(The call volume) has been fairly steady, he said. Theres always a little up and down annually, particularly with the tourist seasons because EMS calls are pretty proportional. The more people we get, the busier we are. We typically run between 650 and 750 calls per year.

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Sangre Chronicle > Red River > Red River receives state funding for projects at ambulance building