LAKE PLACID — At 8 a.m. last Thursday, paramedic John Dyess and EMT Todd Kreulen parked a Highlands County EMS ambulance at the Tomoka Heights station, unlocked the door and staffed this station for the first time since mid-April. That put county EMS back to its full daily staffing level of eight ambulances, including two in the Lake Placid area. About four hours later, Dyess and Kreulen responded to their first 911 call from the Tomoka station, a former model home just north of Florida Hospital on U.S. 27 South. They reached a patient in respiratory distress in less than five minutes, well within EMS's goal of a six-minute average response time. Steve Coltharp, acting EMS director, said reopening the Tomoka station improves response times not only in the Lake Placid area but also throughout the county. The county's recent hiring of two paramedics and three EMTs solved a manpower shortage that forced EMS to reduce its ambulance crews from eight to seven. ...more

November 13, 2007

A second fire station in the community west of the University of South Florida should improve service and 'make it more livable for the crews,' an assistant fire chief said this week. ...more

October 6, 2007

SEBRING — On average, a 911 call brings a Highlands County EMS ambulance crew to the scene of a medical emergency in five to six minutes. "That's an excellent response time for a rural county," said Steve Coltharp, interim director of county EMS. ...more

October 4, 2007

The social networking Web site Facebook has been warned that it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims that youngsters there are safer from sexual predators than at most sites and that it promptly responds to concerns, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. ...more

October 1, 2007