An ambulance is NOT a bus...

[Richard B the EMT]

EMS units in the late 70's early 80's were made by GRUMMAN Coach Corp. the same company that made NYC Transit Buses at the time. Hence the name buses.

As I suspect FormerEMSLt297 was in the old Health and Hospitals Corporation EMS prior to me (I started June 3, 1985), perhaps he can confirm:

1) In the late 1970s and early 80s, the Grumman "Omni-Bus" vehicles were breaking down, or were so structurally unfit for the streets of New York City, the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority actually borrowed 200 (or more) spare busses from a different manufacturer, from the bus authority in Washington DC, while sidelining the majority of the Grummans. The problem was so bad, while then Mayor Ed "How'm I doin'" Koch, on a trip to the mideast, wisecracked, during a photo-op, riding a camel, that camels might be a viable alternative to the Grumman busses.

2) Wasn't there a page copied from a book by one of the first woman doctors in the city (circa 1880 or 1890)posted in the "EMS Museum" at the FDNY EMS Academy at Fort Totten, where she, and the teamster driving the ambulance, referred repeatedly to the horse drawn ambulance as a "Bus"?

As of last spring (2007), the posting was no longer there.