Emergency services personnel and municipal officials from Superior Ambulance Service, Harrisville Borough and Marion and Mercer townships meet to discuss collaboration and pooling of resources at the ambulance service’s headquarters Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. Sol McCormick/Butler Eagle

First responders and municipal officials from Harrisville, and Mercer and Marion townships met at Superior Ambulance Service in Mercer County on Wednesday, Oct. 1, for an open discussion on ways to collaborate and pool resources

This is the exact kind of coordination the communities the services cover need to better guarantee good response times and efficiency. With many mobile medical services struggling to keep up with the need for service and also going through staffing challenges, collaboration and resource-sharing is critical.

And as some of the people at Wednesday’s meeting pointed out, the rural roads that populate the northern part of Butler County and its neighboring counties to the north are prime locations for serious vehicular crashes. Harrisville’s assistant chief, Will Boyle, pointed to Iron Mountain in Cherry Township and Transitions Healthcare Autumn Grove in Harrisville as examples of places that bring in truck traffic.

Doug Dick, EMS chief of Superior Ambulance Service, commented at the meeting that each of the departments should know who can provide resources for specific situations, not only between different organizations but within the region as a whole.

Dick also implied that the meeting Wednesday would not be the last time the group collaborated — he gathered email addresses for those in attendance so everyone could communicate between one another when not in person. The meeting Wednesday could also be followed by future meetings, perhaps on a quarterly basis, which should be reassuring for the people in northern Butler County when it comes to their emergency services.

— ET