Kewaskum area residents now serviced by other ambulance companies

Some residences in the extreme southeast corner of Fond du Lac County may notice a slight time delay on their ambulance requests in 2025. This is because the village of Kewaskum has discontinued their ambulance services.

The village itself is now being serviced by the West Bend Fire Department. A representative from both fire departments said their wouldn’t be a drastic change in response times as even though West Bend is farther away, they ambulance crew is on duty at the station 24/7 whereas EMTs in Kewaskum were mostly volunteer, meaning they had to go to the station first to get a rig and then go on the call.

The real difference comes in the rural areas north of Kewaskum in Fond du Lac and Sheboygan Counties that used to be covered by Kewaskum. Those areas will now be absorbed by other community ambulance services such as Campbellsport for Fond du Lac County and Random Lake and Orange Cross for Sheboygan County.

The reason for the change was the drop in availabilities of those volunteers. Departments around the country are seeing this same drop with many of them needing to make drastic changes to keep services available for the communities they serve. Kewaskum averages around 350 ambulance transports a year or about one a day. Not nearly enough to warrant having a full time crew. While looking at it from the West Bend department, it’s only an average of one added call per day in their nearly 4000 runs per year. Something that just made more sense to do.

The village of Kewaskum and West Bend will work together for six years when they will review options again at that time.