Rush Township will hold a special meeting Thursday at 6:30 p.m. to discuss ambulance services for the township.

The meeting was called following heated arguments regarding emergency service providers during the supervisors recent monthly meeting.

Representatives from the all-volunteer Ryan Township Emergency & Rescue Squad, which had been a basic life support (BLS) provider in the township until its July removal, will be invited, as will officials from the Tamaqua Ambulance Association, Lehighton Ambulance Association, McAdoo Fire Company Ambulance Association and the Schuylkill County Communications Center.

In July, supervisors dropped Ryan Township as a provider.

But after talking to Ryan officials, board Chairman Shawn Gilbert on Thursday made a motion to reinstate the ambulance squad.

“There are issues with coverage. They showed me their issues,” Gilbert said. “We’ve been seeing issues from Tamaqua. If it isn’t broke, we’re not going to be sitting here fixing it. We don’t want to be involved with the ambulance squads. That’s a whole different organization by itself.”

The “issues,” he said, were dropped calls for BLS and advanced life support services. The Ryan squad told Gilbert that they will work to remedy the situation and hoped to be reinstated, he said.

Supervisor George Gerhard asked if he had shared the information with Supervisor Robert Leibensperger or anyone else. Gilbert said he had not.

“You said you did research. Did you talk to anyone from the other side?” Gerhard said, referring to Tamaqua ambulance.

Gilbert said he hadn’t had conversations with Tamaqua.

“So then you really didn’t do research, right?” Gerhard asked.

Gilbert explained that the Ryan ambulance needs volunteers like most organizations but is financially sound. He said Rush residents who live in the Barnesville area, where the Ryan squad is based, feel that response time from Ryan would be faster than the Tamaqua squad’s.

Gerhard said the issue of dropping Ryan has nothing to do with money or his daughter’s part-time employment on the Tamaqua squad.

“This truly has to deal with patient care and response time,” Gerhard said.

The Tamaqua squad provided data showing response times and missed calls from both squads from January to August in Rush Township.

While Tamaqua missed 3.3% of its calls, Ryan missed 24.5%, according to the provided data.

“Of the 14 calls missed by Ryan Township for the above data, four were due to being on another call. A total of 10 were missing due to being out of service. Even if we adjust the scratch rate, it would come to 17.5%. If we apply that same ruleset to Tamaqua, the scratch rate would be 0%,” according to the information provided

Ryan ambulance officials did not attend the meeting.

“I would love to sit down with both organizations to hash this out,” Gerhard said, noting he didn’t want a vote on reinstating Ryan until a meeting had happened.

“Since I’ve been in office for 17 years, there has never been an issue” with Ryan ambulance, Gilbert said of making the reinstatement motion.

Resident Jackie Varner noted that a family member suffered a massive heart attack in Hometown a few years ago.

“Unfortunately, we called and Ryan Township couldn’t help us,” because unlike Tamaqua, it only has BLS, she said. “We had to wait 35 minutes for an ambulance to come out of Sugarloaf to assist us with ALS because Tamaqua wasn’t able to help us there. (That is) because Ryan Township would have been the one that would have been on-call. The call went from Ryan to Sugarloaf. It never went to Tamaqua.”

Varner believes that her family member might have survived if the situation was different.

Hometown Fire Company Chief Barry Messerschmidt weighed in.

“Going back 15 years, 10 years, both ambulance organizations were very strong,” he said. “Over the years, up until now, things are getting slim.”

The Tamaqua squad, he said, is paid and has coverage around the clock. Even so, he said, there’s a chance they might miss a call if they’re dispatched to others at the same time.

Messerschmidt said the fire company has been called out almost 10 times over the past year for lift assists on Ryan’s behalf. He also recalled being on a call and waiting more than 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive for a heart attack patient.

“I’m not saying that we get rid of Ryan. I’m saying sit down and have the meeting but wait until you have the meeting to change or make your mind up,” he said.

Another resident said she understands that Ryan’s squad is all volunteer but said saving a person’s life must be done within a few minutes. Each time a call is scratched, more minutes are wasted.

Gilbert’s motion on the Ryan reinstatement was tabled.

The public is invited to the meeting, which will be held at the township building.