The future is here and it’s a day old. At midnight Saturday the Lawrence County Emergency Medical Services went into action.

And the county EMS director Buddy Fry wants everyone to know that even though the name is different and the paramedics’ uniforms have changed from blue to gray, the county still has emergency service when residents dial 911.

“There is not going to be any loss of service,” Fry said. “They are going to get the same advance life support service.”

The new service began after the tri-county Southeast Ohio Emergency Medical Services dissolved when two of its members — Athens and Jackson counties — pulled out. Lawrence County was forced to create its own, which it did in November with about 60 full and part-time paramedics and EMTs.

Right now the service is working on getting its Medicaid and Medicare insurance numbers to bill those government agencies for emergency runs.

Until then, the county has budgeted an additional $300,000 to be added to up to $600,000 in revenue anticipation notes to cover start-up costs.

SEOEMS had an almost 40-year run and Fry was there from the beginning. In fact, he remembers the days before there was a tri-county emergency service when funeral homes would answer calls.

“We started SEOEMS as a federal project in 1973,” Fry said. “It was one of seven in the whole United States, picked to demonstrate that EMS could work in a rural setting, not just in cities.”

The first three years as the pilot project SEOEMS was financed with federal funds.

“After that the areas that wanted to stay afloat had to come up with their own money,” Fry said.

Now as the LCEMS gets under way, Fry lists specific goals he has for the service.

“We want to improve quality control and training and we want to be more fiscally responsible,” he said.