Ambos dispute delay

By Tania Martin
THE Metropolitan Ambulance Service has disputed claims that it took 28 minutes to arrive on the scene of a car accident in Emerald recently.
MAS spokesperson James Howe said it only took the ambulance 11 minutes to respond to the call.
He was responding to concerns by Kevin Teasdale of Emerald that it took almost half an hour to arrive on scene before a further two ambulances were called to the scene.
Mr Teasdale said it felt longer than half an hour, but that in emergency situations it was hard to judge time.
The accident, near the Teasdale property, involved a vehicle crashing into a telephone pole in Pinnocks Road in Emerald, with three people in the car being injured. Mr Teasdale said his son was the first to ring triple zero at 3.09am on Sunday 22 January, but it took some time to convince the operator that there was a need for an ambulance.
He said his son then went out to the accident scene with the phone and, treading a careful line to keep the accident victims calm, kept trying to convince the operator of the need.
“He had to put the phone close to the victims so the operator could hear them screaming in pain. It was such a difficult process just to secure an ambulance,” he said.
Mr Teasdale said his son then went about making the car accident victims comfortable, providing pillows to two of the people who were at that stage lying on the ground next to the vehicle.
He said his son then got a torch and, reassuring the victims that he wasn’t going to hurt them, checked out their injuries and stayed with them until the ambulance arrived.
Mr Howe said the ambulance received the call for help at 3.11am and arrived on scene at 3.22am, which was well within the guidelines for response time to a traffic accident.
He said the three people in the car were taken to Dandenong Hospital in a stable condition.
However, Mr Teasdale said that it might have taken the second ambulance 11 minutes to arrive, but not the first.
The MAS has said that in emergency situations like this accident, it sometimes appeared to take longer than the actual time.
Liberal spokesman for Gembrook Simon Wildes said it was unacceptable for people involved in a serious accident to have to wait for nearly half an hour for emergency services to respond.
Mr Wildes said that, thankfully on this occasion whilst serious, the injuries sustained were not life threatening.
He has challenged Health Minister Bronwyn Pike and Labor Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato to investigate the matter immediately and provide an adequate explanation.
The Mail attempted to contact Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato but did not receive a response before going to print.