Inside the new Tisbury Emergency Services Facility, hoses are neatly wound, office boxes are half unpacked and three emergency vehicles take cover in the high-ceilinged bay. The building, which was set to be occupied last July, finally is home to the ambulance department, with the fire department soon to follow after final repairs on the asphalt are completed.
Upstairs in the day room, EMT volunteer Ellie Beth sat comfortably on the couch with her computer last Tuesday morning.
“This is a certainly a huge improvement on what we had before,” she said.
“The closet,” chimed in Jeff Pratt, Tisbury ambulance coordinator. “We had a little office that was a third of the size of this room and it actually was a utility closet.”
“Here you feel like it’s very home-like,” said Ms. Beth. “And we are ready to go when it’s time to go. But there is a lot of time when we just wait. And it’s a great place to wait.”
The ambulance department previously worked out of tight quarters on the first floor of the town police station.
The new 18,000-square-foot building has administrative offices, conference rooms and six truck bays.
“Want to see something cool?” said Mr. Pratt during a tour of the building Tuesday. He opened a door from the bay to a stairwell that is nearly three stories high.
With a roof vent and moisture-resistant walls, the stairwell doubles as a training tower with a mock interior fire and theatrical smoke, said ESF building committee chairman Joe Tierney, who is also a fire lieutenant, training officer and technical rescue leader.
“I enjoy training with people and was able to integrate a lot of training props into the station,” Mr. Tierney said. “Eighty per cent of our work is training for that situation that will come up at sometime.”
There is also a laundry room, kitchen, decontamination room, a patient treatment room for walk-ins, and three bunk rooms with five beds total.
Previously on-call volunteer EMTs would sleep on the couch or go home to sleep and drive to pick up the ambulance for a call.
“I could go on and on,” said Mr. Tierney about the many improvements. “But just having air conditioning, wow. We barely had heat. The other station would run out of gas in February because we couldn’t keep up with the heat. Now we have a building that is climate-controlled.”
Twenty-four geothermal wells have pipes that pump water from approximately 300 feet below ground which then circulate the water back up to cool or heat the building between 70 and 76 degrees.
Mr. Tierney said the $6.8 million project is still under budget, with a few housekeeping things remaining on the punch list.
“We just scored some plates and silverware from the thrift shop,” he said. “It’s kind of like moving into a house. We still have to make the beds, that kind of thing.”
Mr. Pratt said he is “tickled pink” to finally be in the building. But fire chief John Schilling said frustrations with the drawn-out public building process still linger.
“The excitement of this project was drained out of us a long time ago,” the chief said.
Mr. Pratt could still find the silver lining. “My hat’s off to Joe Tierney. There is just not a nail that he doesn’t know about.”
And all agreed that the best improvement is the ideal location.
“We are no longer running an ambulance service out of Martha’s Vineyard’s busiest parking lot,” said Mr. Pratt, referring to the downtown Water street lot near the Stop & Shop.
Outside the office windows of the new ESF building a group of children walked in a follow-the-leader line around the Tisbury School. A few cars passed with a quick whoosh, then it was quiet again.
Back at the old fire station on Beach Road, cars whizzed by and people filled the sidewalks in a congested scene.
“We are located in a flood zone and the most congested area on the Island. How’s that for an emergency response?” said Chief Schilling.
“There are some things we will miss,” he said outside the old building as he waved at another passerby. “But the building has outlived its useful life.”
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