-
Ground was broken Tuesday morning for a new facility for Bryan County EMS. Matt Swearengin | Durant Democrat
A groundbreaking ceremony was Tuesday morning where a new facility will be constructed for Bryan County EMS.
It will be located near their current building at 306 S. 22nd Ave. and is being funded by a $5,560,000 bond that voters approved in August 2022.
EMS director Bryan Norton said the new building will give EMS the space it needs plus have room for future growth. EMS has been housed in its current facility since 1996. Prior to that, EMS was in the former ice house building behind Taco Casa.
“This will be Bryan County EMS’s first new home,” Norton said. “We’ve always remodeled another building.”
The Durant Area Chamber of Commerce participated in the ceremony.
Susan Edelen committee chair, for the chamber, said, “Brian, thank you so much for being in the community. You do a wonderful service. You’re on call 24/7.”
Norton said EMS has 29 medics and there are sixeight on duty every day.
“Right now we have two bunk rooms that multiple people sleep in and when we get over here in this one, we’ll have 16 individual bedrooms,” Norton said. “So, we’ll have our supply room and everything like that it and it will also become a safe room.” Chamber of Commerce President Rob Piearcy said this was a great day for Durant and Bryan County EMS.
“We’re so proud of you guys for doing this and adding on,” Piearcy said.
Norton said it is the taxpayers who should be thanked.
“The taxpayers voted for us to have a bond issue and believed in us and here we are breaking the ground and we are going to have our new building,” Norton said, adding that EMS hopes to be in the new building by this time next year.
In an interview before the bond was passed, Norton said, “The big deal here at Bryan County EMS is we just ran out of space. Everything was kind of built for the day when it was built. It wasn’t built for the future. We’ve actually got ambulances that don’t fit in our bay anymore because when these buildings were built, our ambulances were like small vantype ambulances.”
The new facility will be a little more than 15,000 square feet with 12 ambulance bays.