By Lara Fominoff @LaraFominoff on Twitter

City to donate decommissioned vehicles for “Los Amigos” project

Jan 23, 2018 | 3:19 PM

LETHBRIDGE – It might be difficult for many of us to imagine what life would be like without access to buses, ambulances or fire trucks. But that’s what life is like in many poor Mexican communities, according to Sunrise Rotarian Karl Samuels.

At Monday’s meeting, Lethbridge City Councillors voted unanimously to donate three decommissioned vehicles: a 2010 ambulance, a 2012 ambulance, and a 2004 Blue Bird 84 passenger school bus to the Rotary group for their 2018 “Los Amigos” project. Both of the ambulances had surpassed their mileage allowances and requirements as governed by Alberta Health Services.

Samuels says for the last eight years, their group, along with members of Lethbridge Fire and Emergency, have travelled to various Mexican states, including Jalisco, Sinaloa, and Colima to deliver a variety of used emergency and community services vehicles.

“You have to actually be there to experience it, like how these vehicles are being put into use to help people with disabilities…for people that need to get to hospitals, emergencies…so these things are in operation around the clock, seven days a week.”

The paperwork can be tedious and meticulous, and just getting across the border into Mexico can take hours or days. But Samuels says besides their group, there’s only one other in northern Alberta that will undertake this type of time-consuming, and even dangerous project.

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“There’s a… I do believe in Tepatitlan [de Morelos, Jalisco]… a school that deals with people with disabilities. And that handi-bus, before we got the handi buses down there, there were people down there who had never left their houses, never left their villages, couldn’t go to school, couldn’t go to the hospital.

“Now that the buses are there, guess what? They’re starting to go to school. It’s a good feeling when you look at the look on families’ the children’s faces and see that these things are going to good uses.”

So far, the project has delivered 36 decommissioned vehicles worth about $86,000. The project is also supported with tools, equipment and financial support by not only Lethbridge, but Pincher Creek, Fort Macleod, Cardston, Airdrie and Raymond Rotary groups.

Those who receive the vehicles also go through an intensive training program. It’s still being worked out; which communities will qualify for service/emergency vehicles this year.