Port Arthur’s City Council members are within their rights to carefully weigh a request for a permit from a second ambulance company here. That’s what council members will do, in a workshop setting probably before the next council meeting, Oct. 8.

Since 2010, Acadian Ambulance, an employee-owned company based in Lafayette, Louisiana, has been the city’s sole provider for ambulance service, providing both 911 emergency and patient transfer services. The city’s ordinance for ambulance service providers mandates that they provide both 911 and patient transfer services.

Acadian operates in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas and is large enough and ambitious enough — 4,000 employees in six divisions — to operate its own college campus in Louisiana, National EMS Academy. Acadian has operated in Texas since 2006. Air Med services expanded to Texas in 2017.

This week, Viking Enterprises, doing business in Harris County as City Ambulance, appeared before council members seeking to do business in Port Arthur. It attempted to expand, unsuccessfully, into Beaumont last year but you can’t blame them for seeking to grow, especially in providing transfer services, the more lucrative end of the ambulance business.

Viking operates in several Texas cities. The company provides transfer services but says it will also provide 911 services, if necessary. The company’s director of operations says he has 911 experience; most of the emergency medical technicians the company hires have at least a year or two of 911 work, he said.

In weighing the possibility of granting the permit, City Council members are setting aside the recommendation of Port Arthur Fire Chief Larry Richard, who noted for council members that City Ambulance has never done 911 work. Council members suggested that having two companies here might provide more choices to consumers, especially because a handful of people who spoke on City Ambulance’s behalf said Acadian has sometimes run late in providing transfer services, especially under the demands of providing 911 services, which can be more urgent. In isolated cases, some City Ambulance supporters said, that meant delaying transfers for several hours.

It’s important to remember that if a second company is granted a permit here, consumers won’t necessarily gain choices, not in the sense of consumers who shop for other products and services. The likelihood is that, especially in 911 runs, ambulances will be dispatched by rotation.

That could mean that if ambulance company A is closer to the wreck but ambulance company B is next up in the rotation, B gets the call. In this case, Richard told the City Council, Acadian routinely meets the benchmark of eight minutes in getting to 911 calls. City Ambulance has no track record.

That makes the council’s decision especially weighty — life or death, even. Just ask the patient lying by the roadside wreck.