Roosevelt Island Ambulance Image From nyc.gov How long should it take an ambulance to respond to a Roosevelt Island medical emergency? According to the NY Post , the average response time for a New York City ambulance responding to a life threatening medical emergency last year was 5 minutes and 15 seconds. A recent incident occurred on Roosevelt Island involving a child not breathing and turning blue in which it took an ambulance 20 minutes to arrive. A Roosevelt Island resident sends in this message describing what happened:
A friend of mine, who lives at the Octagon, has a one year old daughter who had a seizure … around midnight (she is ok now but she was blue, not breathing, unconscious). It took an ambulance 20 minutes to get there. Before that the firemen came but I guess they are not sufficiently trained to deal with such things and were basically useless. It turns out the ambulance that eventually transported them to NY Presbyterian came all the way from Long Island (not Long Island City!) and it took the driver some time to figure out how to get to NY Presbyterian hospital. I did a little investigating this morning and found out that RI had a dedicated ambulance (since 2008) but doesn’t any more (according to public safety). why?
I asked Roosevelt Island Public Safety Director Keith Guerra if the ambulance assigned by the FDNY for Roosevelt Island is still stationed on Roosevelt Island. Mr. Guerra replied:
The Ambulance is still stationed on Roosevelt Island. When it’s not around, it’s because it is doing a transport to the hospital from here or it needed to go over the bridge for a call close by.