The Beacon Volunteer Ambulance Corps was first started in 1958 due to impetus from a Beacon police officer and a Beacon Engine Company member named Walter Detwiller. He was a transplant from New Jersey, but while still living in New Jersey, his son's life was saved by a volunteer ambulance corps in the area. He thought that it would greatly benefit the community to have our own ambulance service in Beacon and he went to work on the project. He enlisted the help of Joe Catalano and George Cable and the members of the Beacon Engine Company and recruited 29 people to start the Beacon Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

     The initial ambulance was a 1948 burned out Cadillac ambulance, donated from a dealer in New Jersey, that the members refurbished. The ambulance was housed at the Beacon Engine Company, which also housed our emergency phone. Soon we outgrew our facilities there and through the efforts of the Beacon Engine Company, an old two bay garage was purchased and donated to BVAC. This was our new home. As the years passed, BVAC again felt the growing pains and in 1975 construction on the current building commenced. This was done primarily by volunteers and the heavy construction was through the Naval Reserve Seabee Unit located in the area. Construction continued for five long years. The BVAC Headquarters as we know it today was dedicated in May of 1980.

     There was no county dispatch system for us in the beginning, so at first, 3, then 7 members had phones installed in their homes to receive emergency calls. They would get on the phone and call members to man the ambulance whenever an emergency call came in. In 1980 a new dispatch system came to BVAC as the Beacon Police Department began to answer the phone lines and they would, in turn, dispatch us by way of our, then new, pagers. This continued until 1984 when we joined the Dutchess County Bureau of Fire dispatch system, which we still use to this day.

     We have changed and upgraded our service many times since our incorporation on April 16, 1959. We became New York State Certified in 1990, Defibrillation Certified in 1991, and provide complete Advanced Life Support by way of contract providers in October of 1996. We currently run a fleet of three modern, fully equipped, New York State Certified ambulances, as well as a Basic Life Support First Response vehicle. We have also recently added a Mass Casualty Incident Trailer. We currently run approximately 2200 calls per year, which makes us one of the busiest volunteer services in the county.

This page was last updated 11/25/2007