Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps hosts family-friendly open house Sunday

Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps will open its doors Sunday for a family-friendly open house that mixes children's activities and community outreach with a harder message about local emergency coverage: the town still depends on volunteers to answer the next call.

The event is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at RVAC headquarters, 1111 Osborne Avenue in Riverhead. Visitors will find Chinese auction prizes, a dunk tank, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office K9s, traffic safety demonstrations, live entertainment by 106.1 WBLI, raffles and activities for children, all designed to draw families into a building many residents only see from the outside when an ambulance pulls away.

That public invitation comes with a practical purpose. RVAC says it was founded in 1978 and serves about 30,000 Riverhead residents and countless visitors across a district of roughly 78 square miles. The Town of Riverhead says the corps is still 100% volunteer and provides emergency medical service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, a reminder that the system depends on enough EMTs and drivers being willing to show up at all hours.

The workload is not small. RVAC’s posted alarm totals climbed from 4,168 in 2020 to 4,513 in 2021 and 5,504 in 2022. Calls stayed high at 5,132 in 2023, dipped to 4,809 in 2024, then rose again to 5,299 in 2025. The numbers underscore the pressure on a volunteer operation that must keep pace with both Riverhead’s year-round population and the surge of visitors tied to its position as a tourist destination on the East End.

That local strain mirrors a broader Suffolk County problem. The county’s emergency response model still leans heavily on volunteers across 109 fire departments and 28 EMS agencies, even as rising call volumes and declining volunteer numbers make recruitment and retention harder. For Riverhead, the stakes are straightforward: if fewer people step forward to staff ambulances and drive them, response capacity shrinks.

Sunday’s open house will give residents a chance to see the equipment, meet the volunteers behind the uniforms and ask how to join the corps. In Riverhead, the difference between a festive community event and a resilient emergency system may come down to whether enough neighbors are willing to volunteer at 1111 Osborne Avenue.