Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew delivered disastrous flooding across the city, and as we worked to help people suffering illnesses and injuries, two of our ambulances sustained flooding that was bad enough that the vehicles were declared total losses. This represents an overnight loss of one-third of our fleet.

Sixth ambulance

We’ve placed our brand new ambulance, “925” in service, thanks to donations from the community and a state Rescue Squad Assistance Fund grant.  For the first time in our history, we have six ambulances in our fleet, and they all share the same basic custom-tailored design.  This arrangement is critical to operational efficiency.

Grant awards

We won a $172,684 grant from the state Rescue Squad Assistance Fund and a $22,346 grant from the Virginia Beach Rescue Squad Foundation to complete projects to add a 6th badly needed ambulance to our fleet, and to outfit all our ambulances with safer Stryker Power-LOAD systems.  We are still looking for about $101,000 in… Continue reading Grant awards

KVRS on the Hampton Roads Show

Our member, Paramedic Kate East (center, below), appeared with EMT Terry Connelly from our sister squad, Ocean Park, on the Hampton Roads Show today to talk about our system and how dependent we are on donations and recruits from the community.

Ambulance configuration

Today we made two documents publicly available in the hopes they may be helpful to other squads that are ordering new ambulances. The KVRS Ambulance Detailed Technical Requirements and the KVRS Ambulance Graphics Package are full of lessons we’ve learned over four years of very detailed specification work.