Moorpark to Request Paramedic Services : Emergencies: The plan would put specially trained firefighters in the city’s fire stations to decrease response times.

Firefighters with paramedic badges and emergency gear will climb onto ladder trucks in Moorpark if the Ventura County Board of Supervisors allows the city and the firefighters’ union to test a program aimed at improving emergency services.

The Ventura County Firefighters Assn. convinced Moorpark officials Wednesday night that putting paramedics in the city’s two fire stations would be the cheapest and most efficient way to reduce the average response time to medical emergencies.

“It’s a big step for us,” said Capt. Ken Maffei, the association’s president, after the City Council voted unanimously to set aside up to $125,000 to finance the program for a year.

The council will send a letter to the supervisors next week asking for approval before the next fiscal year begins July 1.

Under the Ventura County Fire Department’s current rules, even a county firefighter with paramedic training cannot dispense medicine or perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Although 80% of their calls concern medical emergencies, firefighters must wait for a paramedic to arrive with an ambulance. Pruner Health Services, which provides ambulance service in Moorpark from two locations in Simi Valley, often takes up to nine minutes to reach the scene of an emergency, according to a city staff report.

The firefighters association estimated that the program will cost $75,000 in the first year and $25,000 in the years to follow. The city would not need to purchase emergency vehicles and could reduce emergency response time to under six minutes, association members told the council.

About 15 firefighters in the county are certified as paramedics and six would be transferred to Moorpark to staff the two stations.

The Fire Department’s administration, however, believes that the program will cost more than the association’s estimates, and could exceed $125,000 a year. The association’s figures do not include funds to provide ongoing training and to replace fire equipment, said George Lund, chief of the Fire Department.

Lund said the council’s action is premature because, in coming months, the county will be adding new equipment to fire trucks to treat heart attack patients. He said the county needs time to evaluate how well the equipment works before starting a new program.

Don Pruner, president of Pruner Health Services, declined to speculate on how adding to paramedics to fire trucks would affect his business. City officials said the new program would supplement the service provided by Pruner. Firefighters would treat victims on the scene and Pruner’s ambulances would transport them to area hospitals, officials said.

“It’s kind of hard to describe the frustration one feels when you’re watching the patient disintegrate on the living room floor . . . waiting for a paramedic to arrive,” said Capt. Jim Arledge, a firefighters association member.

Fire departments across Southern California, including several in Los Angeles County, have used paramedics on their trucks for more than a decade.

The 400-member union in Ventura County began lobbying for paramedics in the early 1970s. The union hopes to begin adding paramedics to other county stations if supervisors approve the Moorpark program.

Maffei said he expects the county Fire Department and Pruner to delay final approval while they put together cost estimates for the Board of Supervisors.

“They’re going to throw up the roadblocks and stall this thing as long as they can,” Maffei said. But “the public, I think, is not going to let this issue die.”