With an idea coming to life, Homer created our ambulance corps utilizing a small shack seated on the MacArthur football field next to the Wantagh fire station. Shortly after, we needed to find another home. WLVAC was moved to Hunt Road into a small house on Levittown’s school district property. The house came with a two car garage, which housed our first ambulances, a 1951 Cadillac and a 1947 Buick. Yet again, we had to find another new and permanent home.
Now settled into our permanent home, we sought for a way to accept calls from the community for medical attention. Our first dispatcher was a single person always at headquarters answering the phones. After he died, we tried using several phone lines dispatched by the wives of the men who volunteered here. Later on, we implemented a red phone system. This system gave each dispatcher and officer of the corps a red phone to answer in their own homes while on duty. At this time, our ambulances were primarily providing the community with transportation to hospitals and back home.
In 1981, the ambulance corps gained access to the Fire Communications dispatching service, commonly referred to as “Fire Comm”. This was an agreement with the County Executive, The Fire Marshal’s Office, and Nassau County Police Department’s Emergency Ambulance Bureau. The agreement was, that if we wanted to use Fire Comm as our dispatcher, we needed to be in the 9-1-1 system. In order to do that, we had to send members to become Advanced Medical Technicians. So 5 members became AMTs right away. Now with Fire Comm as our dispatcher, we obtained the ability to respond to 9-1-1 emergency calls. WLVAC began providing Advanced Life Support through the 9-1-1 emergency response system with the ability to treat critical and medical emergencies.