New Orleans Emergency Medical Service is a lifeline for the person on the line calling 911.

But now, EMS is the one asking for help.

“I've been ringing the bell for months and months now and, I guess the silence is deafening," said Dr. Jullette Saussy, Medical director of New Orleans EMS.

She was addressing a New Orleans city council committee. She said that the agency has two critical needs: ambulances and trailers.

“The mayor gave us a directive back in the summer and said buy them 10 ambulance,” Saussy said. “Well, that didn't happen. So, now we're down to half our fleet.”
FEMA paid for 25 ambulances immediately after Katrina, and Saussy says they need 15 more to complete their fleet, especially since she says the initial 25 are being run ragged.

City leaders say the city's overall vehicle replacement program is dependent on a pre-k bonding program, and that even to lease ambulances the contract must go out for bid.

As for trailers, the agency is still operating out of them three years after the storm.

EMS, the third district police station and the NOPD’s special operations division were all destroyed on Moss Street.

“Because Moss Street was a building that we did not own, we have no money from that. FEMA will not even pay for build out for a new facility,” said New Orleans Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia Sylvain-Lear.

Sylvain-Lear said that the city is in the process of buying this building off of Paris Avenue as a new, permanent facility for the third district police station. But that still leaves EMS without a permanent home.

“We look and we look and we look, and I have to give them credit: nobody's quit looking,” Saussy said. “At some point, you exhaust that and say, OK, we just need to do something here.”

Sylvain-Lear says the biggest problem has been finding a suitable building to put EMS in with adequate storage for the fleet, and that the cost to renovate Moss Street was too high.

Plus, she says constructing a new building from the ground up is a three-year process.

“We'd like to have a home. We'd like to have a home,” Saussy said.

“And that's a want, and a need from a morale standpoint. But what is non-negotiable in order to answer a 911 call is an ambulance.”