The Idaho Department of Health and Human Services board on Thursday unanimously approved a seven-month waiver of the 24-hour response requirement for the Kendrick and Juliaetta JK Ambulance Service.

Given the recent wildfires and the staffing shortages of a handful of volunteers to care for them, JK Ambulance has “found itself in a position” where it is unable to meet demand, Wayne Denny, director of the Idaho Bureau of Emergency Medical Services & Preparedness, told the state health department.

Denny said he applied for the exemption at the request of JK Ambulance. In his written application for the exemption, Denny told the board that staffing levels were so low that enforcing the legal requirement to have ambulances on duty 24 hours a day “would likely result in the cessation of service.”

The volunteer ambulance service serves a 10,000-square-kilometer area with a population of about 1,000, Denny wrote. It has four volunteer paramedics and one or two volunteer drivers, so it can only perform “very limited operations during the day with little to no reserves,” Denny wrote.

“The challenges with rural ambulance service that we talk about pretty regularly are pervasive here in the JK community,” Denny told the state health department. “The situation is that the providers they have on staff can do a great job in the evenings and weekends. During the workday, when people are at work, they struggle to staff the ambulance.”

Denny told the state committee that this was the third time he had seen a request for an ambulance waiver in his 20 years with the state emergency services office. Officials typically try to avoid waiver requests by getting ahead of the issue, such as through recruitment efforts, he said.

“The reality is that you can have a small volunteer service like this that really relies on one or two people who can provide that service during the day. And when they retire, we’re in a tough spot,” he said. “And that’s where we are now with JK. We’ll get through it, but … they’re just going to need some time.”

According to Denny’s application for the waiver, neighboring fire departments and volunteer EMS agencies have agreed to cover JK Ambulance’s area of ​​operation. But the closest EMS agencies in Deary and Troy are also rural, volunteer agencies “with similar challenges,” he wrote. The larger cities of Lewiston and Moscow are about 40 minutes from JK Ambulance’s area of ​​operation, “so they are second choices,” Denny wrote. Moscow also has a volunteer EMS agency.

In March 2025, the state health department plans to review progress and decide whether to lift the exemption.