Borough Officials: bad year for moose collisions

WASILLA — A Mat-Su Borough ambulance has collided with a moose for the second time in four months, authorities said.

The collision took place on the Parks Highway between Talkeetna Spur Road and Wasilla about 9:30 p.m., Saturday evening, according to borough deputy emergency services director Clint Vardeman. The patient in the moose-struck ambulance was transferred to another vehicle, which finished the run, according to Vardeman.

Neither the patient nor any of the paramedics received any injuries in the collision Feb. 14, authorities said.

Encounters between the moose and public vehicles tend to happen in cycles, according to Vardeman.

“Some winters we don’t have any,” he said. “Some winters we have several.”

Last Wednesday, an employee of a local fire department also struck a moose between Caswell and Willow. The driver in that instance managed to swerve, and the moose glanced off the passenger side of the truck, causing minimal damage according to borough Emergency Services Director Dennis Brodigan.

“There’s a lot of moose out there,” he said.

Those two collisions between moose and public vehicles come after a Nov. 21, 2014, collision between a moose and an ambulance transporting the victim of a car wreck near Mile 164, Parks Highway. A medical technician received non-life-threatening injuries in that collision, and the ambulance was disabled, Vardeman said.

The borough maintains collision insurance on borough-owned vehicles, but in many cases, that insurance doesn’t cover the entire cost of replacing a new ambulance, Vardeman said. For example the ambulance totaled in the November 2014 incident garnered an insurance payout of about $25,000, or about a seventh of the cost of a replacement ambulance, which can cost about $175,000.

Borough owners can employ devices like so-called moose lights to help improve collision avoidance, but they sometimes come with strict limitations, Vardeman said.

“You can’t use those if you got oncoming traffic,” he said. “They have infrared cameras, but they’re really expensive.”

Some public vehicles, including police cars, in the Fairbanks area have recently installed the thermal imagers, but the cost can be prohibitive, Vardeman said.

Moose follow the food, Brodigan said.

“It depends on where the snow levels are up in the hills,” he said.

“They come down because it’s easier to find food, and a little bit warmer,” Brodigan added. “It has to do with the temperature, the area, everything. It’s not predictable.”

Wherever they live, most Valley residents can easily recite a close encounter of the moose kind, Brodigan said.

“I went to the Willow Fire Service Area recently and it seemed like everyone had a moose story,” he said.

Moose are only one of the obstacles local ambulances face: borough emergency services responders are seeking capital improvement funds to replace five of 21 borough ambulances after years of deferred maintenance. Borough officials are looking to refurbish or repair equipment rather than replace it, because of the expense, Brodigan said.

“As long as the chassis and the power train system is good, it saves quite a bit of money to just put another box on the back,” he said. “Our diesel engines last longer than gasoline engines do. It’s just a matter of switching them out.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.