SALEM — The city fire department rented an ambulance this week to start using for medical calls beginning Friday.

Fire Chief Scott Mason said it’s in preparation for a coronavirus surge that could tie up private ambulance companies, adding another way for the fire department to help out.

“If a private ambulance is not available for transport, we will do the transport,” Mason said.

The fire department runs on all medical calls, but normally can’t transport since the fleet doesn’t include an ambulance, with personnel providing life-saving measures until an ambulance can arrive.

There have been times when crews had to be called from Green Township or Damascus to transport patients due to the unavailability of an ambulance in town.

With COVID-19 expected to peak at some point, Mason said he would hate to have his firefighters at a medical call and not be able to transport if all the ambulance companies are on other calls.

The ambulance was rented from Myers Equipment Corp. in Canfield for $100 per day. Mason said the plan is for up to three months at a cost of $9,000 out of his capital budget. He said he’s hoping to get reimbursed for at least 75 percent of the cost through the Federal Emergency Management Agency due to the state of emergency.

Beloit Fire Department donated a cot, and Damascus Fire Department donated a stair chair and a couple of backboards.

“Everything else we already had or University Hospital has made available,” Mason said.

University Hospital in Cleveland oversees the department’s first responder program and provides all drugs and most of the medical equipment firefighters use in response to medical calls. All firefighters are certified Basic EMTs, with two certified as medics and one holding certification as an advanced EMT.

“We’re just trying to do the best we can for whenever this peaks out. If we have to pick up slack, we’ll be prepared for that,” he said.

The intention is to bill patients through their insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. University Hospital will send the EMS runs to the billing company, Life Force Management Inc. of Ravenna.

Mayor John Berlin told city council members about the ambulance during his report Tuesday night when council met via Zoom.

“Fire Chief Mason informed me early last week that there is a potential lack of private ambulance service in Salem. With that in mind, we decided to rent an ambulance during the pandemic to help transport critically ill residents to our hospital when a private ambulance is unavailable. Costs for the rental will be reimbursed through federal assistance grants. Chief Mason asks residents to stay at home and continue to social distance for not only the welfare of your own family, but also for the safety of all the city safety services personnel and the families that they go home to every night,” Berlin read from prepared remarks.

Mason said everybody’s been OK so far. The public has been barred from the fire house and personnel have been using an airless paint sprayer with disinfectant every day to sanitize all areas of the station, including the offices and living quarters.

Firefighters are on duty for rotating 24-hour shifts.

Mason said he just placed an order for more N-95 masks, noting they’ve received some supplies from the Columbiana County EMA but not a lot. He purchased for $289 a CPAP cleaning machine that uses ultraviolet light to sanitize N-95 masks, meaning firefighters will be able to use the same masks several times due to the ability to clean them. He said they also will sanitize masks for the police department.

Mason noted that he talked to city Service / Safety Director Ken Kent, the mayor, and city Auditor Betty Brothers before renting the ambulance.

The plan for now is to just rent the ambulance on a temporary basis, but Mason did research the cost in case council decides to make it a permanent addition to the fire department. A new ambulance could cost anywhere from $145,000 to $230,000. The ambulance being rented has a 10-year-old refurbished box mounted on a 2019 Ford E-350 cab and would cost $112,000 at a minimum. He said the rental payments would be subtracted from the purchase price.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he said.

“I hope we get a lot of community support to keep the ambulance,” he said.

The majority of the department’s calls are medicals. If an ambulance was added on a permanent basis, he said he would want to hire a part-time medic for the ambulance. Having an ambulance would also mean less wear and tear on the engines which are now used to respond to medicals.