An ambulance here is privately operated for patient transport. A rescue is run by the town/city with alongside firetrucks out of the same house. What we call “Special Hazards” I believe is called a rescue or heavy rescue in other parts of the US.

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  2. EMSA. I think it’s a private thing? But I don’t know for sure. But if you’re carried to the hospital in one of those it’s EMSA.

  3. An ambulance is the vehicle for emergency medical transport and staffed by EMTs regardless of whether its a private company or owned municipally.

    A rescue isn’t really a term we use universally in the US. Some fire departments do, but I assume it takes on many forms locally.

  4. I work for the local fire department and our solely medical trucks are called ambulances. A “rescue” is a truck that **can** transport but is more for other aspects of car wrecks and large events like hazmat.

  7. There’s not really any hard rules for this, really. A “rescue” vehicle is going to have a bunch of specialized equipment on board to extricate trapped people. That could include cribbing, ropes, cutters/spreaders(jaws of life), hydraulic rams etc etc. My department had a fire engine that was the “rescue.” It had a small water tank and big compartments to haul all that sort of equipment, and it had hoses as well. I’ve also worked with mutual aid departments with a “rescue” that was just a small amount of cribbing and jaws of life in one compartment on an ambulance. I’ve worked with other departments that had enough equipment to move a skyscraper and haul someone out of the basement. All were called rescue trucks.

    An “engine” company will operate a pumper truck. A “truck” company will operate a ladder truck. There’s also quints, telesquirts, brush trucks, fast attack, squads, wildland, and I’m probably missing a few things.

  10. Ambulance is the commonly used term regardless of ownership. There are some industry slang terms that EMS/Fire/Cops/hospitals may use, like a lot of cops will call an ambulance a bus.

  11. Ambulance describes the type of vehicle here, there’s no other name depending on ownership.

    The ones near my house are operated privately, but as part of their contract to do so they also operate out of city owned stations shared with fire trucks.

  12. Medical Emergency Vehicles are Ambulances.

    Fire Departments have several kinds of vehicles: Tanker Trucks, Ladder Trucks, Rapid Response vehicles, etc. But their medical ones are still ambulances.

  13. I was an EMT. Ambulance could transport but the Rescue Squad could not. Ambulance was EMS and Rescue Squad for Fire.

  15. In california, we call ambulances “ambulances” and fire trucks are called “fire trucks”, regardless of which agency operates them.

  16. Man I lived in RI for about 8 years.

    I never heard “rescue” they were always an ambulance whether owned privately or publicly so long as they were for transporting patients.

  17. I don’t think there are different terms used by the public here. An ambulance is an ambulance no matter who owns it.

  19. In this neck of the woods… An ambulance describes a vehicle used to transport injured folk regardless of who owns/operates it. A “rescue” is something that teams of people do to get stupid tourist bodies out of the mountains (it’s considered in poor taste to call it a recovery until you actually have a body even if everyone knows what they’re gonna find when they get there). A firetruck is a firetruck.

  20. Ambulance

    Fire truck

    Police Car

    Police and fire departments might have some more specialized vehicles as well, such as: “The Swat van”, or the “The Fire Department, but not the truck, just one of the cars”.

  24. I have never, in all my life, heard anyone refer to an ambulance as anything besides “ambulance” or “ems”. Maybe “emergency medical transport” if we’re being really formal. We call the ambulance helicopter the “life flight” but I don’t know if that’s just what we call it or if that’s the actual name.

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