The Demopolis City Council yesterday approved an agreement between the Demopolis Fire Department and Tombigbee Emergency Medical Services,

The agreement — which has been a verbal agreement for some time — helps the fire department and ambulance service work together at an emergency situation, establishing the entity in charge of the situation and sharing of personnel and equipment.

“I spoke with (hospital chief executive officer) Mike Marshall about this (Wednesday),” Demopolis mayor Mike Grayson said. “He has no problem with this.”

The council unanimously approved the agreement.

“I actually put that agreement in place,” said DFD chief Ronnie Few. “We are already totally working together. This is just putting something in writing, saying we would work together, and that we would share our resources as well. There is nothing really binding in that. I just thought it was an excellent idea so that we could have a good transition as we try to move over into a little bit of EMS (emergency medical service) to actually support our ambulance service.

“We have a good working relationship already, and I’m looking for us to continue to do that. I thought it would be good for us to put something in writing so we could understand our boundaries and share the resources as well. There is a benefit with sharing resources. The ambulance service buys quite a bit more EMS equipment than we could ever buy.

“Our people are cross-trained as they come out of the local colleges,” he said. “We have also cross-trained those in our department who are existing fire-fighters. What this does is give us the opportunity to know what the boundaries are, to give ourselves a written sense of how we will work together and share things together.”

Still to be determined is an agreement between the City of Demopolis and TEMS, which has beenundetermined since the council voted in September not to pay its share of a proposed subsidy