New ambulance headquarters in the works for Christian County

Add Us On GoogleAdd as a preferred source on Google

Ozark, Mo. (KY3) -

The Christian County Ambulance District (CCAD) made a move that could help save more lives and lay a solid foundation for the future.

The district covers the entire county expect the panhandle, Billings, and Clever. Christie Thompson, director of the ambulance district says the number of calls are going up as more people move into the district.

Due to the increasing numbers, they wanted an optimal location to act as core doors that will aid quicker response times. That’s why Thompson said the district is currently working on plans to begin construction of a new headquarters facility and base on its newly purchased lot, at 320 North 20th Street, Ozark Mo.

“With any real estate, it’s location, location, location,” said Thompson. “We want to serve this community the best way possible, and in order to do that, we have to grow with the growing community.

The headquarters will sit off of U.S. 65 and Highway 14. The goal of the developing facility is to provide the quality of care our community has come to expect. In addition to faster response times, the facility has other expectations.

“We are hoping to increase our classroom space,” explained Thompson. “We have a lot of community education programs that we provide. Hopefully, when this pandemic is over at some point, we can start our community education programs back up and offer larger class settings. For CPR, car seats, and things such as that.”

Paramedic David Hoover has been in the field for 45 years and has been contracted with CCAD for nearly a decade. He said without a doubt, the new location and its resources could be life-changing.

“The more we have technology the easier it is to get where we belong,” explained Hoover. “The easier it is to speak with medical control whenever we need them to have information coming to us about the patient before we get there. Thawed are all very important things.”

Construction is expected to begin within the next 18-24 months for its new headquarters. In the meantime; Christian County Ambulance District packed up its headquarters on 15th avenue in Ozark and moved to move a temporary location at 393 North 21st Street, Ozark, MO. Although there are no medical services or ambulances based at its temporary location, they’ve redistributed to other ambulance bases in the county. The community will still have EMS and EMT’s, and the call response times will not be impacted during this transition.