Pine Plains Rescue Squad member refutes county response time data

PINE PLAINS — A local EMS official is challenging Dutchess County’s emergency response data, arguing it undercounts volunteer responders who arrive on scene without ambulances.

Pine Plains Rescue Squad 2nd Lt. Nelson Zayas raised concerns during public comment at the Town Board’s regular meeting on Thursday, April 16, presenting local response time figures he said more accurately reflect the squad’s performance.

Zayas said county data on response times and non-response rates does not account for situations in which volunteer EMTs respond directly to a scene in their personal vehicles and begin providing care before an ambulance arrives — or instead of one.

“We have everything we need in our cars,” Zayas said, explaining that volunteers will sometimes go straight to the scene to avoid delays associated with first stopping at the firehouse to pick up an ambulance.

His comments follow recent reports on 2025 EMS response times and non-response rates across Dutchess County. According to county data, the Pine Plains Rescue Squad fails to respond to 25% of calls, and the average response time for the highest priority calls is 12 minutes, 52 seconds.

Zayas said Dutchess County data counts the ambulance that carries the patient as the responding agency. He repeatedly emphasized that fact, saying Pine Plains EMTs aren’t always missing calls but are instead providing assistance that isn’t reflected in the data.

As an example, Zayas described a call that occurred in January where a patient had fallen out of bed and needed help getting off the floor. Zayas said the Pine Plains ambulance was cancelled on route to the scene because a Pine Plains Hose Company member could provide the necessary assistance on the scene and an ambulance was not necessary.

That call counts as a non-response for the volunteer EMTs, Zayas said, despite the fact that the ambulance was on route to the scene.

The volunteer EMT also called attention to priority one response times. Priority one calls are the most life-threatening calls, which are associated with a standard response time of no more than nine minutes, Zayas said.

Zayas urged Town Board members to compare his statistics to county data. According to his data, the Pine Plains volunteer EMS squad had an average priority one response time of nine minutes and 23 seconds, nearly three minutes shorter than the average priority one response time reported in 2025’s fourth quarter data from Dutchess County.

He said the volunteer squad’s response times can sometimes be longer than ideal because of long trips or calls that come in at inopportune times. Zayas described a call that came in while the ambulance was dropping off a patient at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, New York. He said that call registered a 17 minute and eight second response time that was unavoidable due to the long trip.

Pine Plains, Amenia, Dover, Stanford and Milan all rank among the lowest in the county for average high priority response times, according to the data. Average response times in North East, Amenia and the Village of Millerton at the end of 2025 were longer than in 2024. Millerton saw an overall increase in average response time of two minutes and 12 seconds.

At the end of 2024, Millerton’s average high priority response time was six minutes 57 seconds. That average had risen to nine minutes eight seconds by the end of 2025. Amenia’s average response time rose from 10 minutes seven seconds to 11 minutes six seconds over the same period. Pine Plains actually saw a decrease in average response time from 15 minutes 31 seconds to 12 minutes 52 seconds.

Officials in northeast Dutchess County communities have raised alarms about dramatic increases in EMS costs in recent years. North East’s contract with Empress — which recently bought Northern Dutchess Paramedics — rose 36% to $696,345 this year, forcing the town to exceed New York State’s tax levy increase limit to accommodate the greater expense.