HADLEY, Mass. - Hadley Fire Chief Michael Spanknebel said their goal for the first-town owned ambulance is to be able to answer more calls from their community.

The vehicle is designated as “Hadley A1” and will be staffed by the fire department.

"Right now, it's going to be running from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the day with our full-time staff," Spanknebel said. "We want to make sure we that have a good foundation build out on it before we start rolling it out mutual aid."

Spanknebel said Hadley has a contract with Action EMS, which operates as the town’s primary ambulance service. But like several communities, Hadley has struggled to keep up with secondary calls, often times having to request support from neighboring cities and towns. 

"There's an average of 100 to 150 calls per year that are second calls after that ALS ambulance is out he door," Spanknebel said. "So our normal response right now is calling our mutual aid partners from Northampton, Amherst, or if they're too busy, whenever we can find an ambulance."

While it’s a small town, Spanknebel said local businesses make the community very busy during the day.

"The evening population of 5,000 swelling into 30,000 to 60,000 during the day with all the hotels and everything that we have here," he said. "It's a challenge to manage that, and when I started in 2005, the town recognized it was time to hire a full-time firefighter."

Spanknebel said the department will take a phased approached with the new ambulance, with the long-term goal of becoming a full-time service operating 24/7.

"So the goal is to again continue our response times, improving our response times, not having to continue calling our local and regional partners to support us with mutual aid and having this ambulance roll out the door for the second calls of service," Spanknebel said.