An 81-year-old woman who fell and broke her hip had to wait about an hour and a half for an ambulance, according to her son.
Phil Van De Keere said he called 911 at approximately 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 15, when he found his mother, Beverly, laying on the floor. She was in agony, and Van De Keere couldn’t move her without causing her more pain.
He told the ambulance dispatcher the situation, and they waited on the kitchen floor, where she had fallen.
Beverly has a walker and a cane for stability, but she had left them to get a cup of tea.
Phil Van De Keere didn’t know how long it had been before he found her, but there were no lights on in the house, because she had apparently fallen during daylight hours.
Sunset that day had been about an hour earlier, so he guessed she had already been laying on the floor at least that long.
After almost an hour of waiting, and fearing his mother might have internal bleeding, he called back, emphasizing that she could have broken bones or internal bleeding, and that he couldn’t move her.
Van De Keere and his mother live near Lougheed Highway and 228th Street, less than 10 minutes away from the Maple Ridge ambulance station. But it was about 7:15 p.m. before an ambulance arrived.
Van De Keere said the paramedics had come from Abbotsford, and were apologetic when they arrived.
The B.C. Emergency Health Service disputes his claim that the call took an hour and a half. According to spokesperson Fatima Siddique, the ambulance arrived after approximately 50 minutes.
She said when the call came in, it was dispatched as a routine call, and after the paramedics assessed the patient, they transported that way.
Those details were from an initial inquiry, and she would not offer more.
Van De Keere said he will ask for copies of the call recordings to determine the correct response time, but even the time BCEHS claims is not acceptable to most members of the public.
“50 minutes – that’s still outrageous,” he said.
A North American benchmark for ambulance response in a city is that an ambulance will arrive at your door nine minutes after a 911 call.
Also, he doesn’t understand why the ambulance would have been dispatched routine.
“I told them she had a fall, and she was in a lot of pain,” he asserts.
Van De Keere is now getting involved in the local campaign to lobby for more ambulances in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows.
A retired bus driver, he said posting only two ambulances to serve a community of almost 100,000, and having other ambulance stations outside of the area cover calls there, is not efficient.
“They’re chasing their tails,” he said. “That’s like playing Russian roulette, two ambulances … “
“We were lucky.”
His mother is still in hospital. Her pelvis was broken in two places, and she hit her head in the fall.
Van De Keere has joined Matt Kelso in collecting signatures for their petition for improved ambulance service. So far, they have 6,000 out of their goal of 10,000.
Kelso said during his campaign he has heard other stories like Van De Keere’s. He said it’s frightening for people with existing health conditions, and he personally has battled brain cancer.
“Thinking that for my next seizure I might have to wait an hour or two hours for an ambulance – it’s scary.” said Kelso.
• His petition can be found at change.org, and Kelso can be reached at mattkelso27@gmail.com.