Month: January 2024

BRADENTON, Fla. — The sirens don’t stop along the streets in Bradenton.

“The growth is continuing there,” said Clinton Faulkner, president of the Manatee County EMS union.

More growth means more need. The county has focused efforts over the past couple of years on filling paramedic openings, but now another problem has sounded the alarm.

“While we’ve been approved for new positions, new stations, things like that, the simple fact is we just don’t have ambulances to put people in. We have the people, we just don’t have the physical ambulances,” Faulkner said.

He says the county has 21 ambulances on order. Some of the orders date back to 2021.

“Right now, the manufacturing timeline is about 30 months for an ambulance,” said James Crutchfield, Deputy Director of Public Safety for Manatee County. ”So we’re buying ambulances 3-4-5 years into the future.”

And it’s not just them. 10 investigates uncovering this is a nationwide issue, an ambulance shortage is impacting first responders across the country.

“It’s taking up to two years or more right now to get this vehicle. Prior to the pandemic, once you got the order in it would be three months to 120 days,” said Mark Postma, administrator for the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services-Ground Vehicle Standards.

He says the organization has been closely monitoring this situation at a national level.

“The industry has been aware of since the end of the pandemic,” Postma said.

He says it’s all because of a labor shortage at the manufacturers.

“These vehicles normally have a life of about five years, and we have to extend that life on these vehicles and that will cause more maintenance, and in some cases, breakdowns could possibly occur,” Postma said.

That he says is the biggest complaint he’s hearing about from communities nationwide.

Even in Bradenton, ambulances need repair, but the community is still in need of help.

“We’ve had to kind of work out agreements with other areas where if we need a spare ambulance. We can actually rent an ambulance if we run out of physical ambulances to keep our current fleet up,” Faulkner said.

The county commission is aware of the backlog and has already approved ambulance orders that they’ll need for the future so they can get their orders on the list, which is what the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services is encouraging all communities to do.

They say if you know you’re going to need new ambulances in a year or two, don’t wait, get on the list now.

BRADENTON, Fla. — We couldn’t tell you about Bradenton and Manatee County without talking about the world’s oldest-known manatee, Snooty. He lived to be 69.

He was the county’s official mascot and lived in the Manatee Rehabilitation Program at the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature for most of his life.

The director of animal care says that’s not usually the case. Manatees will stay at the Bishop for a year or two in a 60,000-gallon habitat that resembles a spring.

“I think the exciting thing when people come here though is they don’t know we — they don’t know we do rehab. They don’t know these animals get to go back to the wild,” Virginia Edmonds said.

Right now, there are two rescued orphans at the Bishop, Ripkin and Tober. Ripkin was found in Ruskin probably at about 7 months old. He had seven broken ribs and still has the scars from a boat injury. But as these guys are getting back to optimal health, they are packing on weight, eating 200 pounds of food a day.

“People always ask how somebody can survive on just plants and grow big on just plants, but I always say think about rhinos and tapirs and elephants, really large animals that only eat plants, but they have a digestive system that helps them get all that nutrient out of there to grow big,” Edmonds said.

They’ve rehabilitated 45 manatees at the Bishop over the years.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The city of Bradenton is changing as leaders work on development agreements for downtown. 

There’s already a plan for a new police department building. The same architect who designed the new St. Pete Police headquarters, AECOM, created a rendering of the vision for the property. Crews are expected to start on the 46,000-square-foot design in June. 

It will cost $30 million.

Meanwhile, another architect, Sweet Sparkman Architecture, designed a new city hall which is also expected to start this summer once the location is finalized. That $18-million project will redevelop an existing building. Mayor Gene Brown says by selling the current city hall for redevelopment, the city expects it will become a $400 million to $500 million project that will bring in tax money that will help other areas of the city, too.

“My goal is to leave it better than when I came in, but set it up for 50 years, you know, where it’s something where they won’t be having to think about for a long time,” Brown said.

Both of these buildings will be set up higher for protection from storms. Brown says they also heard people want more green space, and they’re going to have that with more places for markets, events or even reading a book.

“You see that a lot in Tampa, when you’re up there around some of their buildings and the trees, and that that was up there not too long ago. And I just love seeing one of the streets where they had a bunch of benches out right in their downtown,” Brown said. “It’s an opportunity to set it up for generations to come. Now they’re coming here.”