Prior Lake, Minnesota - No longer will ambulances have to run their engines all night outside in the long, cold nights of the harsh South Dakota winters once an ambulance office and garage is built in Wanblee, South Dakota. With a donation of $75,441 from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the facility will be built this fall. Groundbreaking is expected in early September 2007. The building will take about three months to complete.

With this new facility the ambulances will no longer have to be kept running all night, a common practice during the brutally cold winter nights when temperatures can drop as low as 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) below zero. Taking time for an ambulance to warm up once an emergency call is received could be a matter of life or death in the remote community. With the new garage, the two ambulances will remain indoors in a temperature controlled facility. Response times will also be dramatically reduced, thus potentially saving lives. The facility is housed next to the Wanblee Health Center. The distance to the nearest hospital in the town of Pine Ridge is approximately 110 miles so local ambulances are desperately needed.

The SMSC is funding 29% of the project, with the SMSC grant joining funds from the Wanblee Health Center, which is part of the Indian Health Service, and from the United States Department of Agriculture.

"I appreciate all the support that we've had on this project, with Shakopee, IHS, USDA, and the community support all coming together to make this project a reality," said Tom Poor Bear, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council representing the Eagle Nest District.

Wanblee is one of three communities in the Eagle Nest District of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The Oglala Sioux Tribe has approximately 41,000 tribal members of whom about one-half reside on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a territory that covers over 4,700 square miles in western South Dakota.

^ top ^