Queensland Ambulance Service - History

History

Ambulance services in Queensland first began in 1892. Military medic Seymour Warrian held the first meeting of the City Ambulance Transport Brigade on September 12 of that year. Queensland's first ambulance station operated out of the Brisbane Newspaper Company building; the first officers possessed a stretcher, but no vehicle, and so transported patients on foot. A year after the establishment of the Brisbane centre, another was established in Charters Towers in north Queensland, eventually growing to over 90 community controlled ambulance centres.

The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) as currently known was formed on 1 July 1991 from the amalgamation of 96 individual Queensland Ambulance Service Transport Brigades (QATB). While QAS originally operated under the banner of the Department of Emergency Services, in 2009 the Queensland Government restructured the organisational hierarchy and appointed new Ministers. Today it is a part of the Queensland Government's Department of Community Safety, along with the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service, Emergency Management Queensland and Department of Corrective Services.

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