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EMTs Quitting to Take Firefighter Jobs Causing Ambulance-Crew Shortages

By BOB HENNELLY
Posted 2/3/20

Top Fire Department officials told a City Council committee Jan. 28 that the department’s policy of “promoting” Emergency Medical Technicians to become Firefighters, who are paid tens of thousands of dollars more a year, had produced a major gap in Emergency Medical Service staffing.

As a consequence, they conceded that even as the city continued to set records for EMS call volume, and response times for those calls were rising, there had been a decline in the number of ambulance crews available, a circumstance they said would take “a couple of years” to rectify.

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