On the 60th anniversary of Shelton’s Echo Hose Ambulance Corps, local historian Robert Novak, Jr., reminisces about early ambulance services in the Valley.
From its initial inception in 1909, one hundred years ago, Griffin Hospital maintained an ambulance. Initially horse-drawn, the ambulance covered the entire Valley, and ran out of garages in Derby.
Edward Cotter Jr. would remember in a 1999 interview that the Griffin ambulance normally had one attendant, who was usually a mechanic, so a bystander or family member had to carry the other half of the stretcher to load patients inside.
A photojournalist for the original Evening Sentinel, Mr. Cotter covered a variety of accidents and other emergencies, and decided in 1948 he had seen one too many people laying in the street waiting for the part-time ambulances to arrive. In 1948 he and Joe Riordan formed the Valley’s first volunteer ambulance, Storm Ambulance Corps, in Derby.
Within a year, the Seymour Police, and Ansonia and Shelton Fire Departments had formed their own volunteer ambulance corps.
Shelton’s new ambulance corps was mostly composed of members of the Echo Hose, Hook and Ladder Co. No. 1 firehouse, thus assumed the name “Echo Hose Ambulance Corps.”
About 25 charter members, mostly volunteer firemen, attended the first meeting on September 28, 1949. At that meeting the organization’s by-laws were accepted, with the mission of providing emergency transport to hospitals in Derby, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Waterbury.
Within a month, a new 1949 Packard ambulance went into service on October 2.
The original ambulance ran out of the Echo firehouse, and was equipped with oxygen, a portable chair, a stretcher, and other equipment. Members’ training consisted of American Red Cross Advanced First Aid in the 1950s and 60s. Emergency Medical Technicians weren’t even heard of in most Connecticut volunteer ambulance services until after 1970.
In 1968 about 20 members expressed interest in starting an ambulance in Huntington, due to the increasing call volume in that section of town. A second ambulance was purchased, which was moved to the new Huntington firehouse in the spring of 1969. That year was also significant in that the Ambulance Corps’ first four female members joined in May.
Today a significant percentage of the Ambulance Corps roster is female, far exceeding that of any other Shelton emergency service.
In an effort to centralize the downtown and Huntington ambulances, and provide faster service by housing all-night crews, the city constructed the Emergency Service Building in 1988. Recently a downtown “post” was established in a vacant Howe Avenue store near the Commodore Hull Bridge to improve further improve coverage.
