East Union names LVHN EMS as ambulance service for northeast section of township
SHEPPTON – East Union Township supervisors officially changed the ambulance service provider for the northeast end of the township at Monday night’s regular township meeting.
Supervisors Chairman Kyle Mummey said Greater Hazleton Ambulance, based in Harwood, had provided a 90-day notice to the state that they would cease operations.
“They cover the industrial park, Eagle Rock, Oneida, and down into the cove [Cove Village],” Mummey said. “Shenandoah Ambulance covers everything in the southern end of the township, Hazleton covers the northern end.”
Mummey said, in the interim, Lehigh Valley Health Network EMS in Hazleton is covering. LVHN is the successor to the former APTS and previously covered that territory.
“There’s been no gap in coverage thus far because Lehigh Valley’s been covering, but eventually we’ll have to make that change,” Mummey said.
Supervisor Jill Careyva asked if Shenandoah would cover the remainder of the township, but Mummey said that Hazleton area-based services are closer to the northeastern villages.
He asked the other supervisors if that was a decision they’d like to make that night, noting that the 90-day notice was submitted a month ago.
Careyva made a motion to make the change to LVHN EMS, seconded by Mummey. Careyva, Mummey, and Wendy Danchision voted to approve the change.
Greater Hazleton Ambulance’s closure is the latest in a string of closures in our area and throughout eastern Pennsylvania.
The for-profit service began in 2019 and, according to a Facebook post in October, they were handling 1,300 calls.
Since 2016, numerous ambulance services in northern Schuylkill County have either closed or merged with another service.
Nuremberg Ambulance ceased operations in 2016 after 48 years of operation.
The next year, Shenandoah Ambulance merged with Lost Creek and Ringtown. The combination of mergers and Nuremberg’s closure ballooned Shenandoah’s first-due basic life support (BLS) response area from the immediate Shenandoah area to include much of the Ringtown Valley and patches west of town.
In 2021, Girardville Ambulance became a quick response service — providing emergency medical services but without transportation to the hospital — and closed shortly after.
Regionally, the Kutztown area lost both of its ambulance providers since 2018. Start-up Northeastern Berks EMS closed in 2018, just over a year after it launched.
In August, the longtime EMS provider there, the Kutztown Area Transport Service, also folded.
Following that closure, State Senator Judy Schwank told Allentown’s WFMZ-TV, “Right now, all over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, EMS services like Kutztown Area Transport Service are experiencing financial difficulties, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is something the state legislature needs to address.”
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