Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Castaic Gets 1st Ambulance Station After 2-Year Effort

The community’s first ambulance station opened this week after two years of effort by local officials.

Employees at the Wilson Ambulance Service, which operates ambulance services in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, said response time to many emergencies will be cut by more than half.

“I believe with this station we can give service within 10 minutes to any of the areas,” said Harvey Hall, general manager of Wilson Ambulance, which has 23 vehicles servicing nine stations in the two valleys.

Previously, it took between 12 and 15 minutes for emergency crews to respond to Castaic from the closest ambulance station, which until Sunday was about five miles south in the Valencia Industrial Center.

A welcoming ceremony was held Monday at the new station at 31744 Castaic Road.

Driver Anthony Castiglione said he quickly found out what working at the station will be like, waiting for several hours after the station opened at 7 a.m. Sunday before a call finally came through at the main boat launch ramp of Castaic Lake.

“It ended up being a water skier who was hot-dogging too near the shore,” Castiglione said.

Wilson Ambulance staff members assigned to the station said they expect future shifts to remain quiet compared to surrounding areas, except on weekends when large crowds at the lake lead to more emergencies.

Castaic officials spent two years trying to get Wilson Ambulance to provide the station, as development has led to more residents and a greater need for local ambulance service, said Samuel Ara Azhderian, president of the Castaic Town Council.

Kathy Parker, a Wilson Ambulance spokeswoman, said Castaic still has relatively few emergencies compared to other areas serviced by the company and officials wanted to make sure it was economically feasible to operate the new station.

“We might be a little premature, but if a community is that concerned and wants it that badly we’re certainly there to listen,” she said.

The ambulance company is dispatched by the Los Angeles County Fire Department, in response to 911 calls or other circumstances alerting firefighters to emergencies. Patients are transported to the closest hospital--Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita--unless that facility is too full to accept patients.

Billing for all ambulance service is regulated by the county, which also provides a subsidy out of the general fund to patients who can’t afford ambulance service.