HILLSBOROUGH - A volunteer ambulance squad based in Carrboro will help Orange County improve its lagging emergency response times.

Today officials from the South Orange Rescue Squad and Orange County Emergency Services will celebrate a new joint effort that will add one of the rescue squad's ambulances and some EMT personnel to the county emergency fleet.

Orange County's 17-minute EMS response time is five minutes longer than the county's own goal based on National Fire Protection Association standards. In 220 cases last year, someone called 911 and no ambulance was available at all.

The additional ambulance and crew will not solve the problem, officials say.

Still, "we look at this cooperative effort as a 'win-win-win' situation," said Fred Stipe, chairman of rescue squad's board of directors. "The volunteers of South Orange Rescue gain expanded experience with patients of all needs across the entire county, the county gets additional emergency resources at little or no cost to the county, and most importantly the citizens of Orange County and surrounding areas get an increase in available EMS responders."

During the initial stages, South Orange will provide an ambulance and EMTs at least three nights per week, and during times of need as determined by Orange County Emergency Services. Officials hope to increase that to seven nights a week by January.

Using volunteers to supplement emergency services is not a new idea. Until August of 2009, South Orange Rescue provided an on-call ambulance and EMTs who were stationed on the UNC campus at Odum Village. This service was suspended while the county rewrote its ambulance and rescue franchise ordinances and South Orange Rescue went through an extensive new application and certification process.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners approved a new franchise for South Orange Rescue in March 2010. Established in 1971, South Orange Rescue Squad provides EMS and specialized technical rescue services such as high-angle ropes rescue, swift water rescue and confined space rescue. Since its inception, South Orange Rescue has been an all-volunteer organization.

South Orange Rescue volunteers provide EMS service to the UNC Athletics Department for football, men's basketball and other athletic events on the UNC campus. South Orange also provides EMS coverage for local high school and middle school football games, triathlons, road races, bicycle races, and other "large gathering" special events.

More help for the county EMS department is coming. The county board approved a new ambulance and four new paramedics that start in January and converted six supervisory position to paramedics.

With the new staff, EMS director Frank Rojas Montes de Oca hopes to cut the county's emergency response time to 14 minutes.

But the $550,000 expenditure is about one-fourth of what Montes de Oca had requested. He'd like nine more emergency medical technicians, nine more dispatchers, two more ambulances, a forklift for warehousing and two new 911 terminals.

He still expects increases in the number of incidents where no ambulance is available and in those exceeding 30 minutes response time.