Manatee County's RAPTOR ambubus about to become extinct

If space travel were possible for emergency automobiles, the mileage logged on Manatee County’s lone ambubus would be more than enough to drive to the moon and back.

Yes, the county is preparing to replace it.

Manatee County added a new ambubus to its five-year capital improvement plan during the 2019 fiscal year. The latest step toward adding that ambubus came at a Feb. 9 Manatee County Commission meeting, where commissioners adopted a resolution to accept a $32,843 grant from the Florida Department of Health to buy lighting and cabinets for the incoming ambubus.

Ambubuses are typically used in situations that require medical evacuations from large-scale incidents. Sometimes, that means providing a vehicle where a large number of people are involved. Manatee County Emergency Medical Services Chief James Crutchfield gave the example of a car accident involving an SUV holding a family of four and a minivan holding a family of five.

“All of a sudden you have nine patients,” Crutchfield said. “An ambulance can only safely transport two people. Think of how many ambulances it would take to transport that many. It ties up a lot of resources. The county has 21 ambulances on at any given time. But at certain times of the day, those assets are staggered in based on call volume. This is just a fixed asset that's able to be deployed for multiple patients.”

Other times, that simply means removing people from a particular location or situation. For example, if an assisted living facility lost power and wasn’t able to use a generator, the ambubus could take people from that facility and move them to another one.

They can be used for occasional large-scale emergency situations that require evacuation, such as hurricanes or a school shooting.

Crutchfield said the ambubus generally gets used “a couple times a month,” not all of which are large-scale emergencies. For example, it can be used for on-site support when a large group of firefighters are putting out a fire.

“It has fans and chairs and things on it,” Crtuchfield said. “It (can be) a larger vehicle for people to come in and get cooled off.”

The current ambubus, RAPTOR 1, is a former Manatee County Area Transit bus that was donated and converted to fit the EMS division’s needs. RAPTOR stands for Rapid Activation Patient Treatment or Rehab.

RAPTOR 1 has been serving as an ambubus since Feb. 2019 and has logged nearly 500,000 miles. It did spend many years in its previous life shuttling commuters around Manatee County.

Its replacement will come from Champion Bus, a commercial vehicle manufacturing company. The new ambubus will be a Defender Freightliner on a Ford F-650 chassis. It can hold 12 stretcher patients and 16 seated patients at once, essentially taking the place of three to eight ambulances, according to the county’s CIP.

Crutchfield said there is no estimation for when the county will receive the new ambubus. The county is still working through the design phase. Once that is finished, a delivery timeframe will be established.

The chassis and bus shell with seats, air conditioning and generator will cost $189,252. The cost of equipment, including emergency lighting, striping, cabinets and more is estimated at $89,000. It will include no windows, so as to protect patients’ privacy. The Manatee County Fleet Services Department estimated the new vehicle will last 13 to 15 years.