This Alberta village has an ambulance, but it’s out of town 96% of the time

The Village of Linden has a fire engine, a waterpumper and a rescue truck parked and ready to go at any time. But its local ambulance is being used outside the central Alberta community 96 per cent of the time.  

According to recent data from Emergency Health Services (EHS) Alberta, the community’s ambulance has responded to out-of-town calls 93 per cent of the time over the past decade. So far in 2026, it has answered 11 calls within its coverage zone and 292 outside of it, which amounts to 96 per cent of all calls. 

Mayor Kelly Klassen said he is not surprised by the numbers. He said that as a result, local volunteer firefighters are relied upon even more, until the ambulance arrives. 

“They have a heavy load to lift and they’re volunteers,” he said. “They’ve got to leave their jobs, get in the fire truck, drive out to the call and assess the situation before the ambulance arrives.”  

The data was shared with the village council in late May after local officials requested a meeting with EHS-Alberta after hearing growing concern from residents about the local ambulance’s whereabouts. 

Klassen recalled an incident about two years ago when he said he called 911 about a resident of Linden who suffered a severe allergic reaction. He said dispatchers could not confirm when an ambulance would arrive in the village, located roughly 100 kilometres northeast of Calgary.  

“Fire department showed up thankfully,” he said. “One of the firefighters was a paramedic and he was able to deal with the situation.

Klassen said local first responders are doing great work, but he believes changes are needed from EHS-Alberta.  

Firefighters feel unprepared: chief

Linden Fire Chief Carson Reimer oversees a crew of about 30 members who live and work in the village, which has a population of about 900. He said while the village has one paramedic and members with advanced first-aid training, medical calls are a significant stressor.  

“We often feel like we’re going into … [medical calls]  fairly unprepared,” Reimer said. “And so we view ourselves as we’re just going there to make the person feel comfortable.”

In an emailed statement, EHS-Alberta told CBC News that Linden experiences a relatively low volume of local ambulance calls. Since 2016, the Linden ambulance has responded to approximately 572 events within the village, compared to more than 8,100 in surrounding municipalities.  

EHS-Alberta added that ambulances are deployed to the closest patient requiring care, regardless of municipal boundaries.  

“Providing EHS coverage exclusively within a single community would not be an effective use of health-care resources and would significantly reduce opportunities for paramedics to maintain the clinical experience necessary to deliver high-quality patient care,” the emergency medical care provider said.  

EHS-Alberta stated its system is not designed to rely on volunteer fire departments to compensate for ambulance availability. However, it said Linden’s local fire service has actively “elected to participate in a broad range of medical call types” through EHS-Alberta’s Medical First Response program.

“Their participation reflects a strong local partnership, not a replacement for ambulance services,” EHS-Alberta said.  

Stuck in a vortex   

The issue extends beyond Linden and to other communities near the village. EHS-Alberta data shows ambulances in Carstairs are deployed outside of that community for 87 per cent of their calls, and in Three Hills for 56 per cent of that community’s calls. 

Kara Westerlund, president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, said she believes these issues became more pronounced when dispatch for Emergency Medical Services was centralized provincially.  

“Anytime we centralize services, it is an absolute loss for the rural communities in this province,” she said.  

In 2021, Emergency Medical Services dispatch across the province was fully centralized under Alberta Health Services following a decade of consolidation. The province said the move would make the system more efficient and allow for better co-ordination of all provincial resources.

Westerlund said rural ambulances frequently get sucked into the “vortex” of high call volumes in Edmonton and Calgary, resulting in a perpetual cycle of out-of-town responses.   

“It puts our rural communities at extreme risk of not having ambulances available,” she said.

EHS-Alberta stated it has implemented measures to keep rural ambulances closer to home, noting rural units are generally being drawn into larger centres less frequently than in previous years.  

“These include secondary triage processes, enhanced dispatch practices, dedicated interfacility transfer resources and other modernization initiatives designed to improve system efficiency and preserve ambulance capacity for higher-acuity emergencies,” the provider said.  

Despite the ongoing challenges, Klassen said EHS-Alberta officials recently sat down with the village council, which he viewed as a positive step.

“They were accepting of those problems, which I take as a good sign,” Klassen said. 

Westerlund echoed that sentiment, hoping such collaboration leads to meaningful action that could “have lasting effects in our communities.”