Shelter Island to take over town ambulance

For decades, ambulance service on Shelter Island has been provided by volunteers working for the local chapter of the American Red Cross -- the only Red Cross chapter in Nassau or Suffolk to run an ambulance.

That will end Jan. 1, when the town will take over the service.

Red Cross officials told the Shelter Island officials that reorganization and consolidation on the national level resulted in the change, which does not fit in with the overall mission of the Red Cross on Long Island.

The local chapter and the town agreed to the takeover, in which the Red Cross will give the town its three $250,000 ambulances, its building on Manwaring Road, all its medical equipment and supplies, and will urge its 30 volunteers to keep providing ambulance service to their neighbors.

Joy Bausman, head of the Shelter Island Red Cross chapter, promised "our team of ambulance volunteers will continue to provide prompt pre-hospital emergency care . . ."

Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty, who must now create a new line in the town budget, promised there would be no interruption of services. He could not immediately predict how much money would have to be added to the budget to cover ambulance costs.

Dougherty said adding the service will not cause the town to violate the state's 2-percent tax cap because it will be excluded under the new law. He praised the volunteers who run the ambulance and who often have to coordinate trips with one of the two ferry companies that link Shelter Island to the rest of Long Island. "On an isolated island like ours, with a large senior population . . . the town has to answer the call when the national [Red Cross] decides to shed its responsibility," he said.

Shelter Island, Long Island's smallest town, covers less than 12 square miles and has a year-round population of about 2,300 people. It has no hospital, and emergency patients are normally taken by ambulance to Southampton Hospital or Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport.