History
Our organization has a rich heritage of providing prompt, professional service to the residents of the town of Penfield for more than 40 years.
The Penfield Volunteer Ambulance was founded in 1966. At that time, when you needed an ambulance in Penfield, you had to call a commercial ambulance from Rochester. After some serious calls with delays of over 30 minutes. the Lions Club in Penfield formed a committee to see if a volunteer ambulance service was feasible. It was and they raised $15,000 and purchased our first ambulance. In that first year we responded to 160 calls.
At first, we were only able to staff the ambulance on evenings and weekends. Gradually, we were able to add a day at a time until we reached our goal of 24/7 service.Soon after, we added a second ambulance. In 1977, we began training Critical Care Technicians and the Lions Club came through again and purchased a station wagon to be used as our critical care unit, Medic 6, our critical care unit.The next year we merged with the Southeast Quadrant. (link to SEQ)
Our first facility was in an old nursery on Whalen Road. We built our first base on Jackson Road in 1967 and later expanded as the agency grew. In 2002, we demolished that structure and erected a new building that houses our current operation.
We now have 3 ambulances and a first response vehicle. We also house one of the SEQ vehicles.