Itta Bena officials are hoping a proposed fire and ambulance station will improve emergency response, which they say has been historically slow because of the city's outlying location in Leflore County.
The city has collected $407,000 to build the station. That money includes a recent $102,000 contribution from the Delta Regional Authority, $200,000 from the Mid-Delta Empowerment Zone Alliance and $100,000 from state insurance rebates the city has saved up.
Only one step remains for the building to begin, says Mayor J.D. Brasel. "We're still trying to come up with a little more money to purchase some land."
The city already owns possible sites in the Itta Bena-Leflore County Industrial Park, but Brasel said he would like the facility in a more central location. He estimates the cost of new property to be about $55,000.
The station would make room for city and county fire trucks, currently cramped in the City Hall, and for an ambulance, which Itta Bena currently doesn't have.
City leaders say a full-time ambulance service is badly needed. They have not been satisfied with recent response times from the Medstat Ambulance Service headquarters in Greenwood.
"When we call an ambulance, it takes it 15 to 20 minutes to get over here at least," Brasel said.
The delayed response has been standard since Medstat began serving Leflore County, according to District 4 Supervisor Wayne Self. "When they first opened, they gave us a response time to Itta Bena," he said. "They haven't met that time anytime I've been on the scene."
Self said he was recently at the scene of an accident on U.S. 82, where the ambulance was late. "We had folks laying out there 20, 30 minutes before an ambulance showed up."
Barry Eskridge, chief executive officer of MedStat, however, has a different account of that accident. The response time, he said, was about 12 minutes, and there were four ambulances dispatched to the scene.
The company keeps track of its response times, which Eskridge takes pride in. "We have all our dispatch centers recorded," he said. At that particular accident, "we had four ambulances on the scene and all patients evacuated to the hospital within 30 minutes of receiving the call, which is excellent."
MedStat's records don't account for the delay that occurs in the transfer of information between a 911 call and the dispatch to MedStat.
"A lot of people don't realize that a 911 call goes into a 911 agency, then they call us," Eskridge said. "It might have been two to three minutes between the time the actual call was placed and it filtered down to us to go."
MedStat has never stationed an ambulance in Itta Bena full-time. "There just aren't a lot of calls in Itta Bena to be honest," Eskridge said.
The company gets about 15 calls a month in the Itta Bena area, he said. "That's not enough volume to generate enough revenue to pay for it."
But Brasel envisions a station that serves as an outpost for remote communities in the western part of the county. Response times to those areas would be faster leaving from Itta Bena than Greenwood, he said. "We can get anywhere in Leflore County just as quickly with MedStat being here," he said. "The station would be here for Swiftown, Pugh City, Schlater and all the areas around."
Eskridge said he is not aware of any potential agreement to post a MedStat ambulance in Itta Bena. Doing so would cost about $250,000 a year he said.
Brasel is hoping the county might help out with the funding, and Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham has said the county is looking into such an arrangement.
