Pella Community Ambulance was one of the recipients of the Marion County Community Foundation’s special 10th anniversary grants.

Pella Ambulance Director Laura Clanton says they received $10,000 for special emergency response training.

“We kind of took a look at what the county actually needed in terms of emergency medical services,” Clanton says. “One theme was present throughout, and that was that we didn’t have enough folks that were capable of responding to emergencies in the county.

She says there are nine EMS agencies that will be helped with this money, and the goal of the grant is to help bolster staff countywide.

“Consistently, everyone just really said ‘we need more people’ just to decrease the actual response time,” Clanton says.

“The average response is 7.8 minutes, and that’s just too long in an emergency.”

We have more about Marion County Community Foundation Grant Recipients on In-Depth with Dr. Bob Leonard.