Ambulance Corps Helps Protect Firefighters From Coronavirus

MILLWOOD, NY — The Ossining Volunteer Ambulance Corps has an amazing cleaning system. So they not only take care of their own ambulances and fly cars, they periodically sanitize the police station and municipal buildings. So as the new coronavirus outbreak began to spread locally — Westchester County had 3,891 of New York's confirmed 25,665 coronavirus cases as of Tuesday afternoon — they sanitized equipment for the Ossining Fire Department.

Word about that came to the ears of Greg Santone, chief's aide at the Millwood Fire Company in nearby New Castle.

"We need to protect ourselves and the people we're serving," Santone told Patch. "I called Chief Nick Franzoso and said 'I know you must be crazy busy but is there any chance you could do that for us?'"

Santone was prepared to have their firetrucks drive over one at a time to OVAC headquarters, but on Monday Ossining's Jim Drohan appeared in Millwood.

"Not only did he do the equipment but he did some of the most-used areas of the fire station - and he ran over to Station 2 on Route 134 and did the most-used rooms there," Santone said. "He really went above and beyond."

Franzoso said it was a natural extension of what OVAC has been doing in Ossining and the neighboring communities where it provides supplemental services such as EMS fly cars, including Briarcliff Manor, Croton-on-Hudson and Sleepy Hollow.

OVAC makes the sanitizer and cleaning solutions at Clinton Avenue, under a contract with a company called Viking Pure Solutions.

"About a year and a half ago we invested in the health and safety of our people and the public," he said. "When the coronavirus began to gain some ground we spent a lot of time figuring out what we could do to guarantee our safety and the safety of the communities we serve.

"We said what can we do to assist the places we provide a service to in manpower, especially when we know that supply chains are down and getting sanitizer and cleaning solutions isn't easy," he said.

So Drohan, who is an Ossining employee, uses the OVAC system not only on the ambulances, but on the police department and village and town offices and facilities. "And we've been doing the fire department for the past couple of weeks," Franzoso said.

Helping out in Millwood seemed a natural extension.

"Thank you OVAC for taking the time to keep our members and residents safe!" the Millwood Fire Company responded on Facebook.

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