History • Operations • Membership • Apparatus • Training

History

In 1962 when Dobbs Ferry Community Hospital could no longer provide ambulance service to the surrounding communities, dedicated members of the community such as Gene Downey, Larry Cabot and Vic Grutzner got together and formed the Ardsley Secor Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Secor is part of the unincorporated Town of Greenburgh just outside of Ardsley, part of the school district in Hartsdale.

Operations

All of our members are volunteers. There are approximately 50 active riding members in the corps including our juniors and college students. We also have life members and associates who have been members over the years and although remain interested and active in the corps business, do not ride on any ambulance calls. We respond to calls twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Each year we treat approximately 700 patients.

We are dispatched by the local Ardsley police via pagers and fire horn. Upon receiving a 911 call, the Ardsley police dispatch a patrol car and sound our pagers and the fire horn. All available members respond to the building to insure that the ambulance responds. Each time the ambulance leaves the building on a call it carries a driver and at least one EMT (emergency medical technician) certified by NYS. We usually respond with a crew of about four members. From midnight until 6 am we have assigned crews respond to calls. A specific crew will be on call for three consecutive nights in every eighteen days. When the pager goes off on the crews' assigned night only those four volunteers respond.

We can also be dispatched by 60 control, which is division of the Westchester County Department of Emergency Services. ASVAC is part of the quad village/county mutual aid plan. If Dobbs Ferry, Hastings or any other community is out of service, unable to respond or needs additional resources, 60 control will request we be dispatched on a mutual aid call.

Advanced Life Support is provided by the Greenburgh Police Department who meet our ambulance on scene via fly car. If necessary, a Greenburgh Paramedic will accompany the patient to the hospital on board our ambulance in order to provide ALS level care.

We transport our patients to the nearest appropriate hospital which might include St. John's Riverside Hospital Dobbs Ferry Pavilion, White Plains Hospital or Westchester Medical Center.

Membership

Our corps is very diverse. Our members range in age from 16 to 60+. They come from all walks of life and backgrounds. We have engineers, truck drivers, teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, housewives, real estate brokers, construction workers, entrepreneurs, repairmen, insurance agents, policemen, students and many others.

We have a junior membership of high school students from Ardsley High School. With their parents permission, they are permitted to leave school during the day if their grades are maintained. We encourage involvement of our high school students. They are enthusiastic, dedicated and great when it comes to lifting patients.

Our crews have saved heart attack victims giving them many additional years of life, We've delivered babies on the Thruway, pulled victims out of automobile accidents, reassured Mothers with new babies with temperatures and sometimes we are soothing supportive voices and strong hands to people and families in crisis. It is a very good feeling to know you have made a positive difference in someone's life. And our neighbors are comforted to know that when they call 911 well trained caring friends and neighbors are going to respond to their call for help.

Apparatus

Since 1962, we have acquired six different ambulances, with the newest one in 2009 as a donation from the Thomas & Agnes Carvel Foundation. We currently operate two NYS Department of Health certified Basic Life Support type III ambulances, 50-B1 and 50-B2.

Training

Each member is trained in CPR and driver training before they may ride any call. Each year in February the entire corps is re-certified in CPR. We are chartered under the NYS department of health and follow all of their guidelines and protocols. Our EMT are certified by NYS and re-certified every three years. We require monthly training for the entire corps, in subjects related to types of injuries and situations we are likely to encounter. Each year we do at least one joint training with the Ardsley Fire Department on extrication. The fire department receives donated vehicles and we train on caring for and removing patients from a damaged vehicle.