American Medical Response, the private ambulance provider, said it doesn't plan to re-start salary negotiations, which would prevent the strike.

A strike by Seattle emergency medical technicians is set for noon on Friday, and plans for replacement EMTs remains unclear.

Seattle emergency officials are scrambling ahead of the scheduled strike. About 450 American Medical Response employees in Seattle, mostly EMTs, plan to strike over a wage dispute with their employer.

AMR, a private, national contractor, says it is training 200 replacements to fill in, most of them from out of state. State and King County health officials say they can't approve out of state EMTs at this point, however.

Kristen Maki, spokesperson for the department of health, said "out of state EMS personnel is sometimes necessary in isolated, special circumstances, when use of our existing Washington state agencies and personnel isn't possible."

She said, however, that the county needs to ask for a waiver to grant that special circumstance, and the county doesn't plan to do so. Seattle & King County Public Health said this labor strike doesn't meet the threshold for emergency, out of state technicians.