The Pikesville Volunteer Fire Company will soon be adding a much-needed new ambulance to its fleet of lifesaving emergency response apparatus. The unit, a 2011 Ford F450 4WD / Lifeline, was built at the Lifeline plant in Sumner, Iowa and is currently at Diamond State Ambulance Inc. in Newark, Delaware for dealer prep including equipment mounting. PVFC is hoping to take delivery of new Medic 325 in October and put it in service to serve citizens as soon as possible. The advanced life support unit, which annually is one of the busiest medic units (career or volunteer) in Baltimore County, responded on more than 1,880 calls for medical assistance during 2010 in Pikesville and surrounding communities. The new ambulance replaces a 2003 Ford E450 Super Duty/Lifeline which had more than 115,000 miles, often driven under harsh conditions, and answered more than 13,000 calls for emergency medical service in the past seven years. The new state-of-the-art ambulance with advanced life support equipment will cost approximately $200,000. Much of the funding is coming via community donations, in addition to contributions from two area philanthropic organizations, Save – A – Heart and Covenant Guild, who are each contributing $50,000 during a five-year period. At one time, the PVFC ambulance routinely responded on as many as 2,500 calls per year until Medic 2, a Baltimore County Fire Department ambulance, was put in service in October 1996. This was one of the last BCoFD career (non-volunteer) fire stations to be assigned a medic unit. However, PVFC’s Medic 325 remains consistently busy, often running to emergencies as far away as Catonsville and Cockeysville when closer units are unavailable due to call volume.