May 25, 2026 – By Tim Hundt
VIROQUA, Wis. – Viroqua officials are weighing a new idea from Fire Chief Chad Buros that could put an ambulance at the city fire station and turn the department into a paid mutual aid transport partner when no other ambulance is available.
The concept would not replace Tri-State Ambulance as the primary 911 provider in Viroqua. Instead, Buros told the Public Safety Committee the department could become another mutual aid provider, similar to La Farge, Viola and Readstown, and respond with its own rig when Tri-State has no units free and neighboring services are stretched thin.
Buros framed it as a patient care issue first and a staffing and financial question second. He said the fire department now responds roughly 50 times a year when there is no ambulance available, arriving as medical first responders but unable to transport patients to the hospital. In earlier annual reports he documented that city first responders typically arrive 25 to 35 minutes before a mutual aid ambulance can get to town, with about 50 calls a year involving significant waits for transport and about one third of all EMS calls in the district handled by the fire department’s medical team.
Summarizing that strain, Buros told the committee the current arrangement leaves patients, firefighters and neighboring departments in a difficult spot.
“This is not a knock towards Tri-State, so do not think I am sitting here bashing them. It is reality,” said Buros. “We are still seeing about 50 calls a year, about once a week this month. I think it has been four times in the month of May, that there has been no ambulance available. We go as first responders to be there with them and do what we can, but we cannot transport”.
Buros said the problem ripples out to the community’s mutual aid partners as well, with La Farge reporting that about one third of its annual calls are now mutual aid responses, including frequent trips into Viroqua when Tri-State is unavailable.
He said that growing reliance on mutual aid is not sustainable for small rural services.
“They are getting tired. I think, what did La Farge tell me. About a third of their call total last year was mutual aid calls, which is not okay, not just to the city of Viroqua. There are some others. Westby is having some trouble too, as we are, because they are also covered,” said Buros. “This is reality”.
How the mutual aid ambulance idea would work
Buros laid out what he called an early concept. Under his proposal, the department would seek state licensure to operate an ambulance as a mutual aid partner, not as the primary 911 provider. When Tri-State has no ambulance available and a call comes in from Viroqua, the fire department would respond with its own staffed ambulance rather than a non transport first responder rig.
The chief said that shift would shorten waits for patients and reduce time volunteers spend standing by while they wait for another community’s ambulance to arrive.
“It is better for the patient, first priority,” said Buros. “Rather than them waiting a half hour for Viola to get here. It is not because they are slow to get paged. They have to do the same thing we do. And then they have to drive. It is better for the patient. It is better for us, because our members are going to get back to their jobs and their lives quicker, rather than staying there for 30 minutes. We go, we load the patient, we go to the hospital. It is better for our partners, so they are not coming here as often”.
He also argued that converting some of those non transport responses into billable transports could help offset costs for the city.
“The benefit to that is, then there is revenue. And in that revenue, just baseline thinking, those 50 calls, let us say, instead of us spending money going on these calls as first responders, we would be able to bring in some revenue, which would pay for the expenses and save on just spending,” said Buros. “So there is a benefit to it, beyond, obviously, the patient”.
Buros emphasized repeatedly that he is not proposing to take over Viroqua’s 911 ambulance contract. He described the idea as stepping into a role that is already being filled by other small services responding into the city.
“This is not to take over 911. This is to be mutual aid,” said Buros. “We basically are La Farge coming instead of La Farge coming”.
Training and staffing needs
Any move into ambulance transport would require higher training levels and a formal EMS license from the state. Right now the fire department operates as an EMR level first responder service and cannot transport.
Buros told the committee the department already has several members with the needed EMT certification but would have to build on that base.
He said the state would require at least one EMT on any transporting crew, paired with another EMT or a first responder.
“Yes. From what I have been told so far, is that to be able to transport, you need one EMT and one first responder, or two EMTs, but you have to have at least one EMT,” said Buros. “We do have seven EMTs already. They can only practice as EMR, because that is our license”.
The chief called the ambulance concept a long-term “baby step” project that would require additional recruitment and scheduling work to make sure volunteers are available to staff an ambulance while maintaining fire coverage.
“If we had an ambulance today, and we had the license, we could roll right now, and we have got EMTs, availability and all that other stuff. It is just like everything else. It is volunteers. They are volunteers, so it is if they are available or not,” said Buros. “There would be some more recruitment, some other things to look at that way”.
Used ambulance opportunity pushes the timeline
What moved the idea from background research onto May19 agenda was a time sensitive chance to buy a used ambulance, Buros said.
He told the committee a neighboring chief recently contacted him about a unit that could be available at a lower cost if Viroqua moves quickly. That opened the question of whether the city wants him to keep pushing on the mutual aid ambulance path.
“We have got an opportunity that just came to me that is kind of time sensitive,” said Buros. “I have an opportunity to purchase a used ambulance. It just happened. I am more asking for the guidance and direction and support on if I am crazy or if this is something that you want for your people.”
The chief said he believes he can cover at least the initial purchase without asking the city for direct funding, using a mix of grants, fundraising and other non levy money that he declined to detail in open session.
“The money side of things, there is a fairly good chance that I might be able to squeak by and not ask for anything with some grant money, and some other things, some fundraising money, a few other things that I do not really necessarily want to bring out in public at this point, because I am still working on some stuff,” said Buros.
He added that long term replacement of any ambulance would have to be considered carefully, because Viroqua’s call volume would likely remain far lower than that of full service EMS agencies that justify a new rig roughly every 10 years.
Committee wants more details but signals interest
Public Safety Committee members said they were intrigued by the idea but not ready to treat it as a formal project or include it on the city’s capital improvement plan.
Alderperson Seth McClurg, who sits on the committee, said he supports exploring ways to make the department “as capable as possible” for emergency response, especially if new transports could be set up with minimal cost to local taxpayers.
McClurg also stressed that the city needs to fully understand the logistics and financial structure before signing on.
“I have a lot of questions, and also logistic stuff, but I am thinking we should probably table that,” said McClurg. “I am very interested in the whole process, just because I do not know that I necessarily understand the logistics of how things work right now, and how that could change where it is. But I appreciate you sharing that. It is something that you see as a needed option at some point”.
Summing up his own position, McClurg said he favors increased capability if the city can keep the net cost down.
City Administrator Nate Torres urged caution, telling the committee that adding ambulance transport would be more than a single vehicle purchase. He described it as “an entire new program” layered onto the city’s levy and said he has not yet seen any detailed budget, staffing plan or revenue projections.
Torres said staff have talked about the concept informally but have not done the level of strategic planning that would typically precede a major service expansion.
“Talking about buying an item, but you are talking about buying an entire new program to add on to the current levy of services, and I think I just do not know if this is a conversation for tonight’s agenda,” said Torres. “I know it has been, like, in the back of your mind, and you have been talking about it, but I have not seen any financials, any budget, any anything that shows this”.
Torres recommended tabling the discussion until Buros can develop a more complete proposal and vet it with regional partners and the city’s finance staff.
“I think what Seth said, I think we just table it for now until we have more information, you have done more due diligence on this. And I think, in a way, that I appreciate that there is an ambulance out there that we could buy,” said Torres. “But we have not begun to scrape the surface on this particular topic”.
Personal experience underscores long waits
Committee Chair John Thompson, a longtime council member and retired fire chief, offered a personal story that underscored Buros’ concerns about ambulance availability.
Thompson told the committee he once waited six hours for an ambulance transfer from Viroqua to La Crosse when he became seriously ill several years ago.
“I should point out what happened to me three years ago,” said Thompson. “I was quite sick, and I had to get transferred from here to La Crosse, and we waited six hours for an ambulance. It is a real problem”.
History of Viroqua’s EMS expansion
The mutual aid ambulance idea comes after several years of incremental steps into emergency medical response by the fire department.
In 2022 the department launched an EMR level medical response program, beginning with about a half year of calls. By 2023 the program was fully up and running and helped drive a sharp increase in total call volume, particularly in the city of Viroqua.
In his 2025 year end report presented in March, Buros reported 697 total calls in 2025 across the city and its three town partners, with 372 medical calls and 325 fire and other non-medical incidents. He told the committee that roughly 50 of those medical calls involved waiting 25 to 35 minutes or more for an ambulance and that sometimes three calls come in within 15 minutes when no ambulance is available.
“About 40 times last year, we ended up having multiple calls at a time,” said Buros at that March meeting. “In many cases, or quite a few cases, there was three or more, at least three calls going on at one time. I think in the last month, there was a night where within 15 minutes, we had three calls. One was an accident, two were medical, and we had zero ambulances available”.
The new mutual aid ambulance proposal appears to be the next evolution of those conversations, though both Buros and city officials stressed that it remains in an exploratory stage.
“Long story short, there is a lot more to come, and a lot more information,” said Buros at this month’s meeting. “I am just getting to a point now where I need to start testing the waters of is this something that you want me to pursue, because there is this opportunity that is in my lap right now. It does not mean that has to be the answer, but it does give me a little nudge to be like, is this the sign, is this the key to let us move forward”.
By the end of the discussion, committee members agreed to table the matter while signalling that they expect more detailed planning, cost estimates and partner input at future meetings.
Context on other fire priorities
The ambulance discussion came late in a wide ranging capital improvement review, where Buros also pressed the committee to keep a replacement fire engine at the top of the city’s priority list.
The department’s main pumper engine is already beyond the 15 year front line service life recommended by national standards, and the town owned reserve engine is 33 years old. Buros told the committee that delaying the engine purchase further will push the city closer to an eventual replacement deadline for its ladder truck, which is projected to cost about two million dollars in the coming decade.
He said current lead times for a new engine are three to four years once a contract is signed.
“It is starting to get a little dire,” said Buros. “We are good, and the truck works, and we can fight fires and go on calls, but one of these days everybody is going to look at me and be like, what are you doing”.
The committee later voted to keep the engine replacement at the top of the fire department capital list.
For now, Buros said he will continue researching the ambulance concept, meeting with Tri-State and neighboring departments and looking for non levy funding, while the city weighs how far it wants to go into the transport side of EMS.
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